When the 29 young Navajo men first stepped into the Marine recruiter's office one morning in 1942, none of them were sure what their futures would hold.
"All I thought when I went in the Marine Corps was going to give me a belt of ammunition, and a rifle, a steel helmet, and a uniform," recalled Chester Nez, in a 2004 interview with the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
Nez wasn't altogether wrong: He and his tribesmen would go on to fight in battles across the Pacific and European fronts, much like millions of other soldiers. But these courageous young men were destined for something different.
Though they've received little acknowledgment for their work, the hundreds of Navajos and other Native American tribesmen in the U.S. Military's Code Talkers program helped pave the way for an Allied victory in World War II, using the tools of their own native languages and culture to keep America safe.
The innovative military program was developed in 1942, when Philip Johnson, a white World War I veteran who had been raised on a Native American reservation, made a suggestion to the Marine Corps to help ensure the secrecy of communications during World War II: By translating all messages into Native American languages, they could reduce the risk of interference from Japanese officials, who were otherwise likely to crack their codes and use the secret information to defeat the Allied troops. After viewing a demonstration, the Marine Corps was impressed, and immediately recruited 29 initial Navajo Code Talkers, who were charged with the important task of developing a military code in their native language.
Though some words in the military code were direct translations from English to Navajo and other tribal languages, other codes were more complex, using the tribal name of a type of animal to represent each letter of the alphabet. In some cases, too, the Native Americans would invent new words for military vocabulary that had no translation in their own languages: "Well, when they first got us in there for Code Talkers, we had to work that out among our own selves so, we didn't have a word for tank," Charles Chibbity, a Comanche Code Talker, told the NMIA. "And the one said it's like a [Comanche words] he said, it's just like a turtle, you know. It has a hard shell and it moves and so we called it a wakaree´e, a turtle."
To the Marine Corps' surprise, the Code Talkers created and memorized the complex new military code almost immediately.
The memorization process was simple, one of the initial Code Talkers, Carl Gorman, told the NMIA: "For us, everything is memory, it's part of our heritage. We have no written language. Our songs, our prayers, our stories, they're all handed down from grandfather to father to children—and we listen, we hear, we learn to remember everything. It's part of our training."
Code Talkers did more than simple language translation, though – these men fought in fronts all over the Pacific Islands and Europe, risking life and limb, watching friends and comrades die in battle. They held the fate of their country in their hands every day – the coded messages often included privileged information that could change the outcome of a battle in mere minutes. During the first 2 days of the battle of Iwo Jima alone, the Code Talkers sent and decoded 800 messages, relaying important military information to military officers. Thanks to the Code Talkers' fast and skillful work, the Axis forces never managed to intercept a single message from the Allied troops.
"The Japanese pulled all of their hair out trying to decipher the code," Nez told CNN. But it's one of the hardest languages to learn, that's why it was never decoded or deciphered."
Despite their essential role in the war, the heroic Code Talkers weren't acknowledged in the public sphere for over a quarter of a century. They were not even permitted to tell their own families about the work they had done to protect their country.
"When we got out, discharged, they told us this thing you that you guys did is going to be a secret. When you get home you don't talk about what you did; don't tell your people, your parents, family, don't tell them what your job was," said Chester Nez. "This is going to be a secret; don't talk about it. Just tell them you were in the service, defend your country and stuff like that. But, the code, never, never, don't mention; don't talk about it."
Finally, in 1968, the military declassified the Code Talkers programs, and those who served have finally been honored for their service in wartime: In 2001, the surviving veterans of the Navajo Code Talkers program were presented with Congressional Medals of Honor. On the back of the medals was an inscription in the Navajo language: "With the Navajo language they defeated the enemy."
Though few of the Code Talkers are still alive today, those who've spoken about their experiences serving in World War II have few regrets.
"I found out I was fighting for all the Indian people. All the people in the United States, all that we had, as we call the United States," said Navajo Code Talker, Sam Tso, in a 2004 interview with NMAI. "I found out this is what we were fighting for."
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