Navajo+Code+Talkers

Brooke Lorenz Olmstead (6)  The Navajo's helped a lot in the [|World War II]. America used them to defeat the Japanese. There were two battling sides and neither side was ready to give up at any point in the war. The Allied and Axis powers showed everyone what a true rivalry was like. America had joined the war after a deviating attack on Hawaii's own Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. As tension began to rise even more the American optimism declined. The Japanese were extremely skilled at making a undecipherable code and also breaking other codes. The death toll began to get higher and higher which finally caused the Government to seek help from those who known their country the best, the people. The citizens had ideas for codes but none seemed to fit the criteria they were searching for. But then… there came a revolutionary idea from a single man.  World War II started by two separate conflicts. The German invasion of Poland and the Second Sino-Japanese War. After a series of invasions and conflicts two separate powers formed the Axis powers and the Allied. This would now be the United States Second World War. During the Beginning of the war the axis powers had had many advantages over the allied powers. Such as their extreme offensive tactics. During the early years of the war it seemed as though the Axis powers were winning and starting every event/ war/ attack. The Allied successes were in short supply. What seems like forever the Allied powers make a sudden turn for the better? The Allied powers had broken the Japanese code. This was almost unbelievable because the Japanese had been particularly skilled and known for the skills on breaking other nation’s codes. After a series of major wins againced the Axis powers… the Axis powers are forced to collapse. Although the win over the Axis powers was not as easy as it sounds. In America during the war millions of our citizens had flown over seas to serve their country. Now women were taking men’s roles in bringing home a steady income while their spouse is away. This new fad of women working swept the nation but still couldn't keep it from falling into a depression. Just ten years earlier jobs were hard to come by but as the government was trying to get the nation back on its feet, jobs were available to nearly anyone who wanted one. Money wasn't the only issue for Americans during the war. After the attack on Pearl Harbor had occurred people were living in constant fear of invasion and attacks from the Japanese (especially people on the west coast because it was closest to Japan). There seemed to be no end in sight. The war was unbearable and discouraging. The Japanese had broken almost all the American codes. The marines went public with their need for help in creating a code that would be extremely hard for the Japanese to crack. There were advertisements put out in several news papers about ideas people might be able to come up with. The Marines got plenty of codes but yet none seem to be just what they were looking for until Phillip Johnston had responded to the article with his creative idea to use the Navajo language. Phillip Johnston was the son of a missionary who’s job was to miss ionize Navajos on the western part of the Navajo reserve. Johnston spent a lot of time with the Navajos and eventually became bilingual and spoke both English and Navajo. When the time came that the  United States Marines needed a specific code. Phillip Johnston was up and ready to submit the idea of the Navajo language as the code. The Marines took this idea into extreme consideration but there were many pro and cons to this concept. Navajo is a language that doesn't use letters or symbols. This language you can only speak it so it is therefore very hard to decipher. Also Navajo is used by Native Americans so is there for a native language in America. Although, the problems with using the language is that less than 30 people at this time were like Phillip Johnston and could speak both languages fluently and pervious attempts at codes similar to this failed because there were not any words for military language such as "Bomb" or "Air Force" ect.. After various demonstrations and tests to show the marines how successful the Navajo language can really be. The United States Marines finally did end up accepting this new code in hopes that it was exactly what they have been looking for. And so the big process began…  Phillip Johnston and several Marines went to the a Navajo reservation and began to recruit some of the native americans to help out with the code. Over the next few weeks they moved from reservation to reservation trying to get people fluent in navajo to help them. It was planned that the Navajo would come in groups and have to go through a training camp. This camp was at Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, California. The group that was planned to arrive first was a group of 30 Navajo men, although only 29 showed up. This first group had a very important job they prepared a dictionary which also included made up words for military terms which had no names yet. This book would have to be memorized by every person who attended these training camps. Once the camp was completed each individual Navajo code talker was sent away to a Marine unit deployed in the Pacific theater the job began. During their time helping the marines throughout the war the Navajo recruits completed many tasks. Their main duty was to successfully transmit data and send data to other units with important and helpful information. Also they had to do that without having any of the code breakers from Japan or any other threat to America and the allied powers safety figuring out what their code is. When a code talker received a message what they hear is a sequence of what seems to be unrelated Navajo words. The Navajo must then translate the words into their English word. Next they would take only the first letter of the word and use that to spell of the word or phrase that they were looking for. Using this technique was unique and hard to do quickly. But it did get the job done right and how the Marines wanted it to be done. The Navajo Indians were put at risk during their time in serving their country in World War II. Because the fact that the Navajo code was kept pretty exclusively to only men with the most important jobs in the army and government. Although everything was not going as smoothly as the code. When the Navajo would be walking on several occasions they were shot at or injured by friendly fire. The Navajo Indians were sometimes mistaken for Japanese. Just as Merril Sandoval said "Those city kids had no idea. On the frontline, some of them mistook us for Japanese.". The rest of America expected Navajo Indians to put themselves at risk during the war in return for what? Soon after to the war the Navajo Indians were sent back to their Indian reservations and did the best they could to continue on with their "normal" lives. Although the sad truth is not all of them returned home after the war. 3 Navajo Indians had died while serving the United States. Unlike the United States soldiers they were promised nothing in return for the efforts. America had stuck to that. They had never received any recognition for their enormous part they played in the war up until July 2001. At that time President George Bush finally held a ceremony in which every living Navajo code talker or a family member of one who had deceased and had helped in the First World War were attending. Nearly 56 years earlier each one of these men had used their skill and loyalty to their homeland to help the United States defeat the Axis powers. In return the President presented them with silver medal. This was their first official public acknowledgment since the World War II. Navajo Indians did their part in making the United States successful in World War II. They secured the nations safety and were also able to keep the secrecy about this new code. The United States went to the Navajo's when they were in desperate need of help. And thankfully the Navajos came threw. We will never know how the war would have turned out without them. But what I do know is that they played a huge part in the security and protection of the people who once took over and manipulated Indians years before. The Navajo Indians were extremely significant to the United States victory in World War II.
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