Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Posted on 07/20/2009 7:10:38 PM PDT by SandRat
Detractors called it "Indian gibberish." But not for long. During World War II, more than 400 Navajos serving with the U.S. Marine Corps transmitted vital communications throughout the Pacific theater, using a code known only to them.
Developed by the Navajos themselves, the code completely stymied the Japanese and was never broken.
After the battle for Iwo Jima, Maj. Howard Connor, a signal officer from the 5th Marine Division, was widely quoted as saying: "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."
"They were used at every level, from reconnaissance to the battlefield, to the shelling from the ships and troop movements on the ground," says historian Zonnie Gorman, whose father, the late Carl Gorman, was among the first 29 Navajo Code Talkers.
A traveling exhibit developed by Gorman and students at Wingate High School near Gallup, N.M., is now in Tucson through Aug. 15 at the Arizona State Museum. Gorman will also give a lecture at the museum on July 30.
The exhibit includes several interviews students did with surviving Code Talkers in the spring of 2001.
After opening in August 2001 at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, the exhibit traveled to New Mexico and is now making a swing through Arizona, visiting six communities this year.
Through photos, oral histories, documents and a full-length documentary, it tells the extraordinary story of how Navajo men — none drafted — were first recruited in 1942 to develop an unbreakable code.
Navajos were chosen because their language was extremely hard to learn if not spoken from childhood.
"These men were not just talking their language and substituting words," says Gorman, who lives in Gallup. "It was coded. Even a fluent Navajo speaker could not understand it."
Her father, who was in his mid-30s and lied about his age to join the Marines, was among those who created the code.
"After boot camp, they were transferred to communications training and told to develop a code," says Gorman, 46, who has a degree in history from the University of Arizona and interviewed several of the first Code Talkers.
"The Marine Corps gave them a list of words, military terminology, ranks of officers and names of countries. The list also included the English alphabet. Then they were left to their own devices to come up with a code."
Training, she says, was rigorous, with basic Morse code and other communication skills taught in the mornings.
"Then in the afternoon, the 29 were taken into a room with MPs (military police) escorting them. The MPs would take the code out of a locked safe and stand outside the door while the men worked on the code for two or three hours for four to six weeks.
"When they were done for the afternoon, they handed the code back and it was locked in the safe. The men told me in the evenings in their barracks they would often practice the code, with lights out, lying on their backs."
After training, the men were sent to Guadalcanal, using the code in actual combat. Carl Gorman, a member of the 2nd Marine Division, fought in Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Tinian and Saipan.
"Like many thousands, he contracted malaria at Guadalcanal but continued to fight," says Gorman.
With the code a proven success, more Navajos were quickly recruited. "There were additions to the code and at least two revisions," says Gorman.
The Navajo Code Talkers served in all six Marine divisions and took part in every assault in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945.
Other Indian languages were also used as code by U.S. forces, but the Marines used only the Navajo code, says Gorman.
After the war, Carl Gorman and the others went home, but not until 1968 would their achievement be recognized after the code was declassified.
Like so many veterans, Gorman went to school on the GI Bill, studying art at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. He became a technical illustrator for Douglas Aircraft, set up his own silk-screen company and taught Indian art at the University of California-Davis.
He died in 1998, the oldest surviving Navajo Code Talker of World War II. In 2001, his wife, Mary, and daughter, Zonnie, traveled to Washington, D.C., where he and the other 28 initial Code Talkers were honored with the Congressional Gold Medal.
Today, less than a handful of those men survive. But their remarkable story lives on.
Bonnie Henry's column appears Sundays and Mondays. Reach her at 434-4074 or at bhenry@azstarnet.com, or write to 3295 W. Ina Road, Suite 125, Tucson AZ 85741. Blog: go.azstarnet.com/bonniehenry
Seems like I saw a Hollywood movie about this...
The reader comments are interesting.... I didn’t know there were other code talkers too (Hopis and others). Fascinating story.
Lamh Foistenach Abu!
Only Hollywood could take a great story and ruin it (Windtalkers).
As frequently happens, the real story is much better than could be imagined nor depicted.
I agree.
“The Wind Talkers”
It was the movie that got me to look up that interesting information on the net.
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