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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Posted on 12/21/2002 12:12:15 AM PST by SAMWolf
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are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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The Code That Was Never Broken It is easy to forget what the world was like in the early 1940s. With the United States being slowly pulled into the escalating conflict in Europe, we suddenly found ourselves faced with a two-front war as the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, followed by the Axis Powers declaration of war just four days later. One of the intelligence weapons the Japanese possessed was an elite group of welltrained English speaking soldiers, used to intercept U.S. communications, then sabotage the message or issue false commands to ambush American troops. Military code became more and more complex – at Guadalcanal, military leaders complained that it took two and a half hours to send and decode a single message.  The "first twenty-nine," as they are sometimes referred to, are the first twenty-nine enlistees credited with the development of the original code, consisting of approximately 200 terms. It was designed to be short and concise and used or combined standard native words to create new terms for military hardware. But what proved to be most inventive, and confusing to the enemy, was the incorporation of an innovative alphabet to cover unforseen contingencies. Using this method, the Navajo Code Talker could use distinctly different words for the exact same message, making the code extremely complex, but at the same time improving the speed of vital military communications. Due to its very flexibility, development of the code continued under subsequent Navajo Code Talkers, growing to over 600 terms. By the end of the war the Navajo code, and the very technique by which it was developed, became the most innovative, successful, and closely guarded military secret code of its time.  First twenty-nine Navajo U.S. Marine Corps code-talker recruits being sworn in at Fort Wingate, NM. Between the creation and the code's evolution is a distinction worthy of note. While all Navajo Code Talkers deserve recognition for their contribution to the code's use and continuing development, the original twenty-nine members gave birth to the idea, setting the standard for this living code. To decipher a message coded by the Navajo Code Talkers, the recipient first translated the Navajo words into English, and then used the first letter of each English word to decipher the meaning. Because different Navajo words might be translated into different English words for the same letter, the code was especially difficult to decipher. For example, for the letter "A," the Code Talker could use "wol-la-chee" (ant), "be-la-sana," (apple), or "tse-nill" (ax). Some military terms that had no equivalent in Navajo were assigned their own code word. The word America, for example, was "Ne-he-mah" (Our mother). Submarine became "besh-lo" (iron fish).  Military commanders credited the Code with having saved the lives of countless American soldiers and with the successful engagements of the U.S. in the battles of Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo Code Talkers working around the clock during the first forty-eight hours of the battle. Those six sent and received more than 800 messages, all without error. Major Connor declared, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."
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Let me put a personal spin on the explanation for you.My lifelong best girlfriend never understood the degree of my family disfunction, untill she drove to visit me when I was stationed in New Mexico.
She had stopped at a gas station, for gas and water, and was dismayed when the clerk refused to sell water to two "indians" who walked up while she was paying her bill.She bought an extra gallon of water for the two stangers, and chased them down to give it to them.They argued with her, because they did not want her to be punished for, to them, a naive attempt at basic human charity.
Although she had known me most of my life,she never fathomed the degree of hatred for my (partial)race untill she actually saw thirsty men denied water in the desert, because they were the wrong color.
This was in 1980 something.It is still perfectly acceptable in the western states to openly exibit racial hatred for "indians", but the entire USA must bow to "african american" PC reparations efforts.
It is fortunate for my red ancestors and their friends decendants,that humor as sarcasm is highly respected in native american cultures.
I can count the number of visits on one hand, that I was allowed to know my maternal family.
That single hand beats the years of my odious white grandmother's hypocrital claim to Christianity.
I have never found anyone who can explain the hatred of Jewish people.What did they ever do that could shed light on their persecution for these many years?
In the early years of military occupation in the southwest, young Indian boys were taken from their villages, sometimes against their wishes, and brought to what were called Indian Schools run by the United States government. There, the young men were militarized at an early age and eventually sent off to war.
Indians have the right to vote on the same basis as other citizens of their respective states. In 1948 the Arizona Supreme Court declared disenfranchising interpretations of the Arizona Constitutions unconstitutional and Indians were permitted to vote as they were in most other states. A 1953 Utah State law declared that persons living on Indian reservations were not residents of the state and could not vote. That law was repealed several years later. In 1954, Indians in Maine who were not under federal jurisdiction were given the right to vote, and in 1962, New Mexico extended the right to vote to Indians.
Qualification for voting in Indian tribal elections has no relationship to the right of the Indian to vote in national, state, or local elections. Each tribe determines which of its members is eligible to vote.
God bless your friend.
I'm just stunned to hear this. What the hell is wrong with people? I have a vacation home in New Mexico, and I've never seen anything of this sort - but if I ever do, heaven help the person trying to pull a stunt like this.
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