The Native American soldiers known as code talkers played a key role in the Allied victory in World War II. They transmitted sensitive wartime messages by speaking their native languages, in effect using them as a code. They provided U.S. military forces with fast communications over open radio waves, knowing that the enemy was unable to break the code. Code talkers were most numerous among the Navajo, but they also came from a number of other tribes, including the Assiniboin, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Choctaw, Comanche, Cree, Crow, Fox, Hopi, Kiowa, Menominee, Ojibwa, Oneida, Osage, Pawnee, Sauk, Seminole, and Sioux.
The first known official use of code talkers occurred late in World War I. In October 1918 eight Choctaw men serving for the U.S. in France were put to use as telephone communicators during the battles of the Meuse-Argonne. The Germans were unable to make sense of the Choctaw language, which was unique to North America and had a small number of speakers. Although the code talkers were highly effective, little time remained in the war for this strategy to be used on a larger scale.
During World War II Philip Johnston, who was the son of missionaries to the Navajo and had grown up on a Navajo reservation, proposed to the United States Marine Corps that the Navajo language be used for radio and telephone communications. Like almost all American Indian languages, Navajo had no alphabet—and therefore no printed matter that could be helpful to an enemy. In addition, its unique syntax and tonal qualities prevented the enemy from interpreting information being broadcast. Because there were no Navajo words for various military ranks and pieces of equipment, additional code references had to be agreed upon. These hybrid terms—such as besh-lo (“iron fish”), meaning “submarine,” and dah-he-tih-hi (“hummingbird”), meaning “fighter plane”—ultimately grew to a list of more than 400 words, all of which had to be memorized.
The U.S. Marine Corps began using Navajo code talkers in May 1942. They served in all of the marine divisions and took part in their major campaigns. By the end of the war, the Marine Corps had employed 540 Navajo for service, about 400 of whom were trained as code talkers. They were used mainly in the Pacific theater, but other code talkers were stationed in Europe; 13 Comanche were assigned to the 4th Infantry Division when it landed at Normandy on D-Day. Navajo code talkers continued to be used after World War II. The nature of their work, both during and after the war, delayed public knowledge of their wartime service.
Only in the 1990s, helped by several broadcast documentaries, did the general American public learn of the code talkers’ service. In 2001 the Navajo veterans received Congressional Gold Medals (the highest honor that Congress can award) for their service. In 2002 the U.S. Congress passed the Code Talkers Recognition Act to honor Sioux, Comanche, and Choctaw code talkers, and a similar act in 2008 further honored men of other tribes who had used their languages in the wartime service of the United States. More medals were awarded in 2013.