Navajo code talkers

[jovan]

@twhitt

I see the phonemes “tse,” “gli,” and “tsah,” which I could not begin to write in Hiragana.

ツェ (tse)
グリ (gli, or rather “guri”)
ツァ (tsa)

Still, it doesn’t change the fact that figuring out exactly the sounds of a completely foreign language in real time, on a battlefield, was practically impossible.

[Chronos]

It wasn’t unbreakable. Anything written about the codetalkers that describes the code as unbreakable has only a superficial knowledge of it. It was merely good enough for the circumstances in which it was used.

Oh, rest assured, I’m quite aware that no form of communication is truly unbreakable, short of a one-time pad. When I say “unbreakable” in this context, what I mean is “so difficult to break that a nation at war with a very strong incentive to break it was nonetheless unable to do so for the years of war”. Or as you put it, good enough… But that’s pretty darned good.

[kniz]

When it doubt GOOGLE

Naval Historical Center

Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II.

In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp. Then, at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California, this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.

[jovan]

@kniz

When it doubt GOOGLE

Doooode, I linked to this very article in post 5. That’s the same article we’ve been merrily quoting from all along.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

@grienspace

Just saw the movie. Is it actually true that during the Roosevelt administration, some marines were instructed to murder Navajo marines if they were in danger of being captured by the Japanese?

As has been said before, no. Frankly I am amazed that with all the good stories of World War II, Hollywood seems to go out of its way to get them wrong.

Let me ask you, can you think of any way a Marine would have let himself be captured by the Japanese in WWII? Doing such a thing would have been suicide. Further, if the Japanese did capture a code talker, what would they have done? Taken him to Tokyo to be debriefed? No he would have been horribly killed after torture.

[Askia]

pravnik. How and when exactly did the Japanese finally figure out the codebreakers were speaking in Navajo? Was the fate of the non-code talking Navajo?

[GorillaMan]

@Askia

pravnik. How and when exactly did the Japanese finally figure out the codebreakers were speaking in Navajo? Was the fate of the non-code talking Navajo?

I don’t think they ever did realise that it was such a language. They certainly got nowhere near cracking it. It remained classified until 1968, and the code-talkers served in Korea and Vietnam. As for the Navajo in general, they’re one of the largest remaining native American groups (and growing in size), and have a reservation in Arizona.

[jovan]

I think Askia is asking about a Navajo POW pravnik is alluding to.

[don_t_ask]

The account at www.history.navy.mil clearly overstates the frequency with which words were spelled out. Basic communication was Navaho plain speech with some Navaho words substituting for English words for which there was no equivalent. Only words with no Navaho equivalent or Navaho code word were spelled out. This was why the code was “unbreakable” - it couldn’t even be transcibed in English let alone Japanese.

Better explanations of how code was used are:

here and here

[China_Guy]

I remember a 60 minutes segment a long time ago (1990?) with navajo code talkers. One of the vets was reminicing and talked about how other non navajo marines were ordered to protect the code talkers with their lives. Eg, the non navajo marines were supposed to protect the code talkers at all cost. Opposite of the hollywood version.

[jester21]

@RickJay

The code talkers story has always fascinated me.

But holy moly, that was a TERRIBLE movie.

Welcome to the Modern Age of Hollywood

[pravnik]

@Askia

pravnik. How and when exactly did the Japanese finally figure out the codebreakers were speaking in Navajo? Was the fate of the non-code talking Navajo?

I had thought that the Axis never figured out that the code talkers were speaking Navajo either, but the Congressional Record of the Code Talkers Recognition Act says that the Germans eventually sent spies to training grounds at Fort Gordon and to reservations in Oklahoma to try and figure out what they were up to. I don’t know if they had nay specific knowledge that the language being spoken was Navajo; they may have just had some unconfirmed suspicion that maybe the code was the language of some of our aboriginal people. If they specifically suspected Navajo, it seems like they would have gone to Arizona and New Mexico.

The non-code talking Navajo was Joe Lee Kieyoomia, a survivor of the Bataan Death March. His Japanese interrogators in Manchuria asked him why he was fighting against his own people, and he told them he was not Japanese, but Navajo. He was taken to Nagasaki and alternately tortured by the Japnese and plied by Tokyo Rose for to give up the code. When he first heard the code, he just heard a bunch of talk about scrambled eggs and potatoes that sounded like a nonsensical breakfast conversation. His torture went on for months, but he survived the war and lived to the age of 84.

[Askia]

pravnik. Thank you.