other items while outside his boarding school to maintain his language. “We were forbidden at that time to talk


Detail of an artist’s depiction of Charles Chibitty (Comanche) on Utah Beach during the Allied forces’ invasion of German-occupied France in World War II. “Indian Code Talkers,” Wayne Cooper, 2000, oil on canvas.


Below: In 2013, the U.S. Congress presented 33 American Indian tribes known to have code talkers with a gold medal specific to each tribe, such as this one for the Tlingit of southeast Alaska. Design by Susan Gamble, engraved by Renata Gordon and Joseph Menna, 2013, gold, 3".


Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, Congressional Gold Medal designs (exclusive of Native American Tribal Insignia). © 2008 United States Mint. All rights reserved. Image used with permission. Courtesy of the United States Mint.


communicate and decode. NACT messages were typically brief—usually less than three lines—to avoid creating radio congestion, drawing enemy attention, provid- ing repetition or giving the enemy more transmissions to analyze.


“Whenever


we sent a message it was short, sweet and to the point,” Comanche code talker Roderick Red Elk noted. Because of the


speed of their commu- nications,


code talkers


were especially important in relaying information and con- veying orders that needed immedi- ate implementation or response, such as troop movement, enemy resistance, evacuation of wounded and directing artillery, ammunition and other supplies. “It was in these defensive positions where you used it quite a bit,” Co- manche code talker Forrest Kassanavoid said. “All critical information, something they felt was really top secret, was in Comanche.” During 1943 and 1944, U.S. Army, Navy


and Marine Corps representatives considered increasing their numbers of American Indian code talkers. However, Army and Navy leaders were skeptical the code talkers’ messages were secure and decided not to expand their units. The Marine Corps expressed optimism but kept silent about its growing program. Despite these decisions, several Army and


Army Air Forces units each had small groups of Native communicators. In the Pacific, seven 16 AMERICAN INDIAN FALL 2020


Lakota soldiers in the 302nd Reconnaissance Troop became known as “MacArthur’s Boys,” while the 5th Bomb Command in the 5th Army Air Force had a radio net of 15 Native Americans who sent radio communica- tions in Acoma-Laguna, Apache, Crow, Hopi, Lakota and other Na- tive languages. In the Pacific, the Navajo, the largest group of code talkers, served in every major campaign, from the battle on Guadalca- nal in the Solomon Islands from August 1942 to February 1943 to the conflicts on Okinawa,


which lasted from April to June 1945.


THE CODE THAT ALMOST WASN’T One of the greatest ironies of the Native code talkers in both World Wars is that many at- tended Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools aimed at assimilating them into main- stream American culture by eradicating their languages and cultures. While the schools var- ied greatly regarding how much they strived to suppress Indian culture, they typically did not permit any cultural practices or the speak- ing of any Native language. Yet many were determined to retain their


Native languages, continuing to speak while at home or with other students when teach- ers could not hear them. Farina King (Diné) told how her uncle, Navajo code talker Albert Smith, talked in Navajo to rocks, sticks and


Comanche. That was strictly a no-no, and if we did talk Comanche, we got strictly pun- ished … paddled or forced to wax floors,” relayed code talker Charles Chibitty about his tribal language. “So when we see them com- ing, when we’re talking Indian, we hush-up real quick. Like I say, they was always trying to make little white boys out of us … but it never really worked,” he said. “When Hitler started kicking around, they was looking for Indians, and they come back to us and asked us to use our language for that special unit, to use to send messages.” Despite boarding schools’s efforts to elimi-


nate Native languages, their military-style operations preconditioned the American In- dian students for military service. “We had to march every place we went,” says Kassanavoid. “We practically all wore the same kind of clothes [uniform] when we were there. … Everything was done by the numbers there at the Indian school, so that gave us a good preparation when we went into the Army.”


A LASTING LEGACY


Native Americans and First Nations peoples made many contributions to both World Wars in terms of troops, war bonds, agricultural production and reservation resources. Yet their languages had perhaps the greatest impact. Members of more than 30 Native Nations served as code talkers for the U.S. Army, Army Air Forces, Marine Corps and Navy during the World Wars. Groups of code talkers ranged in size from as small as two (Ho-chunk) to eight (Choctaw) individuals in World War I and from two (Crow, Creek, Seminole and Tlingit) to 17 (Comanche) to more than 400 soldiers trained among the Navajo (of which, around 285 saw combat) in World War II. Although by the end of the Second World War, the Japanese had identified the use of Navajo language against them, none of the Indigenous codes were bro- ken in either World War. A few Navajo code talkers continued code


talking exercises while stationed in China af- ter World War II. However, by 1950 advances in communications encryption technology surpassed the need for code talking. Several World War II Navajo code talkers who later served in the Korean War yet were not sta- tioned together reported that the Navajo code was not used in Korea. While popularly believed to be a secret pro-


gram, dozens of news articles and other sources about Choctaw, Comanche, Sioux, Hochunk


PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OKLAHOMA STATE SENATE


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