Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm editor Kandiskip Sunshine by staff writer Jane Gray. We
Speaker 1: got an email from one of our favorite listeners named Shiro,
Speaker 1: and he is just full of so many wonderful ideas
Speaker 1: for the podcast, and one of the ideas he suggested
Speaker 1: to us was the Navajo code talkers. And I got
Speaker 1: really excited about Sharew's idea, and as as did Jane,
Speaker 1: and so we thought, well, that's it, We're going to
Speaker 1: do it. So you could very well be the next
Speaker 1: lucky person whose idea gets podcasted about. So email us
Speaker 1: at podcast at how stuff works dot com and now
Speaker 1: on with the Navajos. That's right, And to give you
Speaker 1: the context, we have the idea that codes in war
Speaker 1: are very important because the Japanese and World War Two
Speaker 1: were able to um basically tap into communications between the
Speaker 1: Allied forces and intercept these communications. They are sometimes able
Speaker 1: to take issue false commands even and like organize ambushes
Speaker 1: on Allied troops. And so obviously the Allies had to
Speaker 1: come up with codes that were inevitably broken by the
Speaker 1: Japanese and Japanese were so good at code breaking, uh
Speaker 1: that they would break every code that the Allies came
Speaker 1: up with. And this is so frustrating. The Japanese had
Speaker 1: even sent some of their men to the United States
Speaker 1: to study the language. Then you English perfectly, they could
Speaker 1: imitate the accent and the Germans, who the Navajo code
Speaker 1: talkers didn't really have to interact with, but we're still
Speaker 1: a major force. In World War Two. They sent some
Speaker 1: of their men over to Native American reservations and the
Speaker 1: United States to pose as art dealers and other, you know,
Speaker 1: anthropologists that they could pick up on Native American languages
Speaker 1: because the United States was known to have used Choctaw
Speaker 1: and other as many as I think eighteen different tribes
Speaker 1: influences from their languages and World War One. So and
Speaker 1: that's one thing I hadn't heard about was the use
Speaker 1: of the American Indian languages in World War One. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting that I believe it was Hitler who had
Speaker 1: had these anthropologists go over that he had the foresight
Speaker 1: to at least try to understand these languages to break
Speaker 1: any codes that the Americans would come up with. And
Speaker 1: so it was a monumental task. And because World War
Speaker 1: two was conducted over a span of islands that were
Speaker 1: thousands of miles apart, and some instances the United States
Speaker 1: had to have a way of sending messages that the
Speaker 1: Japanese would not interpret, and it was really sort of
Speaker 1: a lost cause until Philip Johnston, who was raised on
Speaker 1: a Navajo reservation with his missionary parents, went to enable
Speaker 1: station in Los Angeles and said, I've got this idea. Uh,
Speaker 1: the Navajo language is virtually unknown to any more than
Speaker 1: like forty non Navajos. It's almost impossible to understand. It's
Speaker 1: completely oral, it's never been written down. I think that
Speaker 1: this might really work. That's right. And it also was
Speaker 1: a great advantage because it was so fast to to
Speaker 1: use as a code. Codes Before that it took hours
Speaker 1: to send INDEC a message sent through among Allied troops
Speaker 1: and the machines at the very least would take thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: and compared this to about twenty seconds that it took
Speaker 1: Navajos to code and decode a message. When Philip Johnston
Speaker 1: had them demonstrated, it was just whild the celerity with
Speaker 1: which they worked, and not just the speed, but the
Speaker 1: accuracy too. And Johnston really was advocating for the Navajos
Speaker 1: language to be used because the Navajos had been educated
Speaker 1: in American schools. And let me give you guys a
Speaker 1: little bit of background on this. Uh, the Navajos were
Speaker 1: pretty much isolated in the southwest United States. They they
Speaker 1: had their home between what they called the Four Sacred Mountains,
Speaker 1: and so their language is very much consolidated within this area,
Speaker 1: and language is essential to their culture. They believe that
Speaker 1: the universe and language were sort of created in tandem,
Speaker 1: the first four words being light, earth, water, and air.
Speaker 1: And it's a very precise language too, and different inflections
Speaker 1: and different tonalities convey entirely different meanings. So the Navajos
Speaker 1: were within this this corner of the United States, within
Speaker 1: the Four Sacred Mountains, and gradually they began to be
Speaker 1: pushed out, first by Spanish invaders and then by the
Speaker 1: United States. And General Sherman of Civil War fame is
Speaker 1: very well known for discussing what he called the Navajo
Speaker 1: problem and beginning the process of eradication. And he was
Speaker 1: even quoted as saying that their attempts at civilization are ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And so the Navajos were pushed out of their reservation
Speaker 1: and they were. They were made to go live in
Speaker 1: New Mexico until eighteen sixty eight when a leader named
Speaker 1: Barbon Scudo negotiated for the Navajo to return to their
Speaker 1: land and in exchange, their children would be raised in
Speaker 1: US schools and completely give up their culture. And it
Speaker 1: got to a point where children who even spoke the
Speaker 1: Navajo language and were overheard were um, we're beaten or
Speaker 1: punished on their mouths, were washed out. So essentially the
Speaker 1: Navajo culture had been somewhat annihilated and completely brushed aside,
Speaker 1: and then it rose back up into question again. That's right,
Speaker 1: and thank goodness that it wasn't I hated completely because
Speaker 1: it ended up saving battle, saving lives in World War Two.
Speaker 1: And some Navajos recount that when they heard the music
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor, there were as many as a hundred men
Speaker 1: who went to enable station to report for duty, and
Speaker 1: they even brought their own weapons in some cases, because
Speaker 1: Navaja cultures very much rooted and the idea of protecting
Speaker 1: the homeland, even the homeland that had spurned them for
Speaker 1: so long. Right and um, not all Navajos were code talkers,
Speaker 1: but many of them were. It's estimated between three and
Speaker 1: about four twenty Navajos served as code talkers, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting to note how the code actually worked because the
Speaker 1: language itself was very complex. Only about thirty non Navajos
Speaker 1: actually spoke the language in the world like on the planet.
Speaker 1: But they added an extra twist to the code that
Speaker 1: made it even more difficult. And that was even if
Speaker 1: you translated all these Navajos a Navajo words into English correctly,
Speaker 1: it was still sound like a random chain of words.
Speaker 1: And that was because what you're supposed to do when
Speaker 1: you got the message was only take the first letter
Speaker 1: of the English translation and put those together to make
Speaker 1: an understandable message. And what made it so unique was
Speaker 1: that there were plenty of military terms that the Navajos
Speaker 1: didn't have words for it all. So something like hummingbird
Speaker 1: would refer to a fighter plane, and a dive bomber
Speaker 1: would be a chicken hawk. So there was this added
Speaker 1: layer of mystery. And even when they thought that the
Speaker 1: enemy might be getting too close to figuring out what
Speaker 1: the words stood for, they would take the letter A
Speaker 1: and come up with three different English words that could
Speaker 1: be derived from it. That's right, So they mixed it
Speaker 1: up and like as you say, not all over. Its
Speaker 1: had to be UM spilled out letter by litter. They
Speaker 1: had those code words that UM were still shrouded in
Speaker 1: a level of mystery. So the high point of the
Speaker 1: Navajo code came after the demonstration that Johnston conducted for
Speaker 1: General Clayton B. Vogel, and that's when Jane mentioned. He
Speaker 1: demonstrated that a message that could take as much as
Speaker 1: thirty minutes to transmit via a cryptograph or other machine
Speaker 1: took twenty seconds for the Navajos. And the three hundred
Speaker 1: eighty second Platoon Coding Unit was formed and recruiters from
Speaker 1: the Marines went to different reservations to get Navajos and UM.
Speaker 1: They had an outpouring of response, and some of the
Speaker 1: men lied on their applications because they were too young
Speaker 1: to go, and at least one lied because he was
Speaker 1: too old to go. And they went to boot camp
Speaker 1: just like any other recruit and then they were taken
Speaker 1: to Camp Elliott to develop their code and it was
Speaker 1: never ever ever written down, and it evolved from two
Speaker 1: hundred eleven to four hundred eleven words, and the Navaja
Speaker 1: were given a lot of creative freedom and developing the
Speaker 1: code on their own. That's right, and to go back
Speaker 1: to how complex the code was, even when Navajo soldier
Speaker 1: who was actually not trained in the code. This this
Speaker 1: soldier was not trained, but he understood the Navaho language.
Speaker 1: When he was captured in Baton by the access troops,
Speaker 1: they ordered him to try to translate it, and he
Speaker 1: never understood what the message was. Because of the added
Speaker 1: complexity of the code. That sort of gave rise to
Speaker 1: the premise on which the Nicholas Cage maybe wind Talkers
Speaker 1: is based. And that's the idea that for every Navajo
Speaker 1: co talker in the field there was a secret bodyguard
Speaker 1: who followed him and was supposed to kill him if
Speaker 1: he were captured, so that he couldn't show the code.
Speaker 1: And we don't never for sure if that was actually
Speaker 1: a component of the Navajo co talker equation. The military
Speaker 1: is not confirming or denying it, but it's, you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of interesting to think about. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: twist to the story, that's right. And one of the
Speaker 1: great quotes that I found about their significance to the
Speaker 1: war in general was from the Battle of the Regima.
Speaker 1: There was a Major Howard Conner who was an officer
Speaker 1: there and he had six Navjo code talkers are working
Speaker 1: around the clock during the battle, and he said later on,
Speaker 1: we're not for the Navajos, and Marines would have never
Speaker 1: taken you Agima. Yeah, on Agia. It was amazing. We're
Speaker 1: talking about almost a thirty six day long battle with
Speaker 1: about forty eight straight hours of coding and translating and decoding.
Speaker 1: About eight hundred messages were sent without a single mistake.
Speaker 1: It is incredible. And the irony is that when the
Speaker 1: Navajo co talk walkers, they were the first twenty nine
Speaker 1: one of the thirty that were originally recruited UM dropped
Speaker 1: out after after training. The first twenty nine two stayed
Speaker 1: behind went over to the battlefields. UM. They weren't used
Speaker 1: at first because people weren't sure that they could really
Speaker 1: trust them in the thick of battle, and they thought
Speaker 1: that troops might be too caught up in military maneuvers
Speaker 1: to really need their codes, and so it took a
Speaker 1: while to build trust for the Navajos to be used
Speaker 1: for their intended purpose. At first, they were just used
Speaker 1: for running messages. They were just runners, and others were
Speaker 1: you know, handed weapons and and told to fight. But
Speaker 1: little did they know, and the Marine raiders where the
Speaker 1: group that really put them to the test, and they
Speaker 1: proved themselves especially um it's Sapan. One group of allies
Speaker 1: was being bombed by their own men and they didn't know,
Speaker 1: and they kept trying to radio to say stop stop,
Speaker 1: this is us, you know, And finally they were able
Speaker 1: to say, have you got a Navaho code talker there?
Speaker 1: And as soon as the Navajo code talker sent the
Speaker 1: message that these were friendly troops that they're firing on,
Speaker 1: the firing immediately ceased. So the power that they how
Speaker 1: it was just immeasurable. And what's sad is that after
Speaker 1: Irrigima was taken and after you know, the bombs were
Speaker 1: dropped on Japan and and the war was in assence over,
Speaker 1: the Navajo co talkers were discharged and they couldn't really
Speaker 1: talk about what their contribution to the war how no
Speaker 1: matter how great it was, um, because it's still the
Speaker 1: the Marines wanted to keep a hold on it to
Speaker 1: use in future battles or what have you, and so
Speaker 1: it actually remained classified until at least nineteen which is
Speaker 1: just you can think of, like, think of what contribution
Speaker 1: you made to the country that you know has betrayed
Speaker 1: your people. In the past and you've done so much
Speaker 1: great work and you come home and you can't talk
Speaker 1: about it. It made it difficult for the co talkers
Speaker 1: who returned to the reservation and those who went out
Speaker 1: to seek jobs, because they couldn't account for what they've
Speaker 1: been doing with the past couple of years of their lives,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't say what they've been doing. They you know,
Speaker 1: had to either fabricate stories or keep silent. And we
Speaker 1: know today there are plenty of soldiers who are coming
Speaker 1: home and you know they they have these dreams and
Speaker 1: awful memories and psychological uh reckonings that they're they're dealing
Speaker 1: with after all that they witnessed in war and I
Speaker 1: Regima especially, we're talking about a volcano where the Japanese
Speaker 1: were lucky enough to have dug trenches, but the Americans
Speaker 1: were fighting on top, covered and volcanic dust, being slaughtered
Speaker 1: all the Japanese had orders to kill at least ten Americans,
Speaker 1: and the Navajo has had to come home and have
Speaker 1: these memories and they couldn't talk about them, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't share them. They had no way to really get
Speaker 1: help for dealing with the after effects of war and
Speaker 1: so when the information was declassified and they were finally
Speaker 1: honored for their service, we we see that, you know,
Speaker 1: these things are still coming up. The Navajo co talkers
Speaker 1: are still talking about the memories that they have, and
Speaker 1: it is I mean, it's testament to how well it
Speaker 1: worked that the Marines still wanted to use it, because
Speaker 1: it's true the Japanese never broke it, and assessment to
Speaker 1: how effective they were and how great soldiers they were.
Speaker 1: And so finally we see that they were paid homage
Speaker 1: back in two thousand one, uh four of the five
Speaker 1: living original twenty nine were honored with Congressional Gold medals,
Speaker 1: and others that went in succession after the first twenty
Speaker 1: nine they were given Congressional Silver medals. Built on about time, definitely,
Speaker 1: So if you want to read more about the Navajos
Speaker 1: and about how code breakers work, be sure to check
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