Navajo Code Talkers

One of the best things about this job is being able to honor individuals who have served the United States with distinction. I know I speak for all our citizens when I express the nation's gratitude to America's Navajo sons for their dedicated and highly effective service during the war. And I'd like to add my personal admiration for these men who almost 40 years ago volunteered for duty with the Marine Corps in defense of their country. Thirty-five years ago, when I was fifteen years of age, I left Teesnaz Ponds, which is

about 150 miles north of here, to join the United States Marines, and the age of sixteen hours in South Pacific, a member of the Navajo Nation-famous Marine Corps code talkers. When I first heard about Pearl Harbor, I was in a place called Kaibito, way close to the Navajo mountain, and there we were working the time when they were making these stop reduction, and I was helping some of the carb boys and trying to explain to the Navajos about the stock reduction, why it was essential that they were going to make these reduction. It was due to land erosion.

So the first thing you know, all the Navajos were laid off, and I was one of them. So another Navajo boy from that area got together one evening, and we started talking about that, and we said, well, let's join the toughest outfit, and probably we'll probably be the first one to get bumped out. At that time there was an advertisement, or something, and that form came over the radio that they wanted the third in Navajos to use them as a specialist. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, December 7, 1941, I was an Navajo civil smith through my trade. I got a postcard from Mungo San, saying that I want you, it means I was drafted. I was drafted for this co-talkers in a Marine Corps.

Back at the beginning of World War II, Navajos would go to movies, and they would see the newsreel, due to the large chin that Mussolini had, the Navajos called him Gord Chin, because his chin looked like a Gord. That Lair had this little tough of a mustache right under his nose, and they dubbed him Dar Rail Chin, meaning the one who smelt his mustache. Philip Johnson was raised on the Navajo reservation, son of a missionary, and he is very good in Navajo language, and tradition and everything. He is one of the persons that I know. I thought about why I did not use the Navajo language in this war, the Second World War against

the Japanese. And that's how the co-talkers come about. This matter of fact was so secret that he was not released until about ten years ago to be made public. Because it was so highly secretive, these young guys were never really allowed to write home and tell about their war experiences, and this sort of thing, the letters were censored. And we had no idea what a total man was doing, and that seemed to last forever for me. We didn't know where he was, and that was a big part of my life where never saw my father who were really sons who should be close to their old man.

I didn't have him around, but I did have a nice big dog named Mickey with my companion. He wrote to Philip and said, I've got all these parents coming in all the time and relatives and they want to know what's happened to all of their son. They just like they've disappeared out the face of the earth. Nobody knows where they're at or what they're doing and what's up. And so against his better judgment, he wrote this real detailed letter, specifically spelling out that, hey, this is all top secret. Don't let it out, but just for your information, this is what's happened to these guys. They're all okay and everything, but it's a top secret mission and don't tell anybody. So lo and behold, what does Stewart do with all this information? He turns around, he writes a big story for Arizona Highways, and it gets published in Arizona Highways and you know what hit the fan.

As a result, Philip got court-martialed and censored the last day that he was on duty. He felt that this stuff would just get buried in archives some places, so he'd pilfered all of the records and of course they were highly confidential and secret. We're very patriotic. My father is a matter of fact, joined a service by Lower News Age and he, as I said, we're very patriotic, bunch of Indians. They told us then what they were going to really use us for, that they were going to use the Navajo language as a code because the Japanese were really, really smart. You know, they really were deciphering the American code just right and left and so they thought they'll use a new angle in sending codes, language code, and that's how they employed or they got us, got us into the Marine Corps to use our language.

We were forbidden to speak the Navajo language as a matter of fact, that was punished quite often, we're told not to speak our own language, there's the co-talkers in the Pacific, you know, where our language was important there, but certainly not in the church or schools. My father had the same situation to understand, they beat them when they didn't speak English. They were teaching Navajo and schools now understand. His name was Sergeant L.J. Stevenson, he was a really good sergeant, as a matter of fact all three of them were really good, they trained us right to the point where we were all sharp and as we got through with our platoon, they were really, they were really proud of us

before I joined the Marine Corps, I was just, I had no goal, I just didn't have no goal, no, no, nothing that I looked forward to, but when I joined the Marine Corps it really made a man out of me, I associated with some Marines that I studied them and they probably stated me too, and there was good, I learned a lot, they saw the scenes going, that's going to happen right here in the United States, but you have to put on uniform and go to shoot in the world overseas, so these two men back now, they're elder people so, all right, I said I'd go along, I was 29 years old, but I said I'd go around and turn it, got my wife to go and find a way we were never seen, so I was ready to go the next day, we were wandering around and one of the officers that they used, they had a desk in there and they

had a brown, folders that were stacked up over here to one side, those were the boys going and over here there was one sitting to the side where the little note touched, parents won't come soon, so I pulled off that tab and slipped it underneath that big stick. On the island of Pelleleau, after we had gone on to the beach and set up our radio station there, message center, and there was an Amtrak full of Marines that passed right by our foxhole, and one of the Marines decided to jump off the Amtrak and doing so, they jumped right on top of the landmine, which blew them up and blew the part of the Amtrak dep, and blew all of the particles into our foxhole, we had parts of dead bodies and the whole bodies all around us, and we were partially buried in the sand. And we were on the fire at Guadalcanel the first time, and boy, was ice skids, and oh,

afterwards I found out that all night, you know, all these sounds like they were shooting, just shooting constantly shooting like one barbed-metre shell, dropping ponds from airplanes, oh, that really gets you, you know, as I remember when they used to drop ponds on us, well, I couldn't get used to, and the worst it got, and that got to the point when we were at, like, sidepain, and they'd tell us, there were some airplanes were coming over, and then they'd drop ponds on us and poor, and I just wish that I was about 23rd of the feet deep into the ground, some place where I went here, but that's the way it

goes. It was, it was, it struck me, I got hurt on sidepain, and I got the vacuated from sidepain. We marched all night, all day, very little feet, but I tell you, it's up to you, we went all along to our volunteers, I.I. sir, we've got marching, walk, walk, walk, three days, three nights, to reach our objective, get ahead and be the roadblock between Monday airfield and Baroko Harbour. So we have a depth out, watch the day, take us, pretty hard, just a few of us, just to hour. That's the island that the Marines took after 72 hours, and of course, before we went back aboard the ship, we had to bury five, a little over 500 of our own Marines,

and this big trench, the other trench, both those are trench about six or seven feet deep, we just laid these baddies in there, above the other, and they covered that up, and that's how we left some of our dead Marines there, and we took sidepain in Tinian. All this time, I have one other co-togger with me, his name was Vicente, Roy Vicente, he's from Two High Two New Mexico. From and I, we operate the same radio, we alternate during the day and during the night. And after our Tinian male, we went on to Iwo Jima, which was our last combat invasion over there, as a co-togger with the Fourth Marine Division.

I think to me, Iwo Jima is one of the greatest battles in the Pacific, as a part of the Marine Corps organization goes. The co-toppers were right in there during their work and fight. During the day, they'd be fighting, during the night, they'd be operating the radio, sending matches and co-toggers, or on a patrol. Think how they used the co-toggers, they had from the headquarters care on to the front line. They usually work in pairs from the front line back to the headquarters, and that's how the Navajo Languages was used. It was much quicker than the Yamor's coat, so they really liked it, and it was used a lot of time, especially on Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima's coat. It keeps haunting me Hey, my, they watched

they watched, they watched they watched, they watched they watched they watched they watched, they watched they watched they watched they watched, they watched they watched, they watched they watched, they watched ...the Japanese, they broke dust and broke dust and broke dust and broke dust and broke dust and they'd never- for which the Navajo code talkers were so successful and one reason for which the institution of code talking was so readily acceptable stems from the fact that in traditional Navajo culture, two, three hundred years ago, the Navajos were raiders and when they went on the warpath, according to legend, they used a special warriors language in order to prevent enemy spies from understanding them. So they did, according to legend, almost precisely what they did as code talkers in the Pacific during the war with the Japanese. Back at that

time, it was not too easy to find Navajos whose knowledge of English and knowledge of Navajo was so good, so near perfect that the Marine Corps could trust them. Any mistake on the part of the interpreter, not understanding English properly or not speaking Navajo well might reflect in the death of many people and the failure of a military mission. So it became very important to find people who were truly bilingual. And as I said, there were not too many of those people at that period in Navajo history because the majority of Navajos had never gone to school at all. The best ones they got were probably early in the war as volunteers because those were the sort of, I suppose, in many ways the cream of the crop as far as education went. They were people that had this educational background.

I have always wondered why other people haven't used uncommon languages for this purpose. Why didn't the Japanese use Ainu, for example? Maybe because their relationship with the Ainu, the remaining ones that they haven't locked off in the course of time is not so good. But supposing that used Ainu, who would understand Ainu, it'd take ages to figure out anything. Some of our subordinates were told that if ever a code talker was going to be captured or that they had orders to shoot the code talker so that our code would not get into the hands of the enemy. That's a good thing we never learned about it.

The mind is like computer, it's there. Like dive bomber, Ginn. Ginn is chicken hawk. Torpedo plane, Kachichouji, Swallow, and observation plane, Neshja, Owl, fighter plane, hummingbird. It's just how it flies, hummingbird. It jumps and then. And bomber, we call it buzzard bomber because it was big. Let me see what the patrol plane, that's a godly crow. Because the crow is always looking guarding, you know, that's the reason why we call it crow. And transport,

port plane is eagle, you know, flies high and it, we just call it eagle. The fifth they used it on, on Iwo Jima, that was really, they really used the Navajo language. As part of a return from the battle zone, according to our Navajo tradition, there must always be a sport dance performed for each warrior that returns from battle. In this case, that was what it was. So in my case, I took several years before I had one. And it was a blessing and a curative ceremony. And it has to be performed. And that way, then your

life thereafter will be in good harmony with the nature and all things on this earth. Which is probably the best thing that our Navajo people have. So in Navajo way, it's the Navajo sport dance. When we landed on side-pan, he got hit by Shuretna. Here is John Brown, Jr. He's one of the top consulmen today. And he's been in the consulmen probably 15 to 20 years now. And he's well-liked by his community. Some of these guys died from drinking. After the wars, my dad always told me what you fell as debt for the US government in this old business. They should provide you with a good home on a piece of land. And

of course, that didn't come about. We, even today, were still trying to get some kind of a home. Some have, after fashion, but in my case, I still live in my camper with sitting on my pickup truck. So that's the extent of my home. Many of the code talkers who were in South Pacific in 1942, 1943, 1944, are now in very responsible position, leadership positions. I, for one, am now serving my third term as the head of this powerful Navajo Nation. And I want to say that the code talkers, the Navajo Nation code talkers, have not only made a tremendous contribution to this country, we call America, but also have made

tremendous contribution to the progress and the welfare of the Navajo Nation. In appreciation for the bravery and fearless service of the code talkers, it is my pleasure to present a presidential certificate of recognition for their role in winning World Ward 2. I'm told there's a Navajo term that means, with a courageous heart, you have fought. Well, I know all the American people will join me in saying to the Navajo code talkers, with a courageous heart, you have fought. I know that the people throughout the country, throughout the United States, are well to be proud of this unit. And certainly we hear on an Navajo reservation now very proud. We cannot seem to honor them enough. Thank you very much.

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