DAYWALKERS NAVAJO CODE

Then Johnston began speaking Navajo-and Jones was impressed. It was possible they were now capable of breaching another indigenous tongue. It had been employed with great success near the end of the war, but in the years that followed, the Germans had gone on to pose as students and anthropologists in the United States in an attempt to learn Choctaw, as well as Cherokee and Comanche. Language from another Native American tribe, the Choctaw, had been used during World War I under a similar belief it would be difficult for the enemy to understand. Jones listened with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Jones, and explained his theory-that the Navajos communicated with incredible complexity, and it would be virtually impossible for messages in their language to be cracked. Johnston headed for a local naval office and got routed to the headquarters of the Eleventh Naval District in San Diego, California.

He thought that Navajo might be just the language they were looking for.

DAYWALKERS NAVAJO CODE

One day in 1942, Johnston was reading a newspaper article about an armored division in Louisiana looking to develop a code based on a Native American language. He even served as an interpreter, at age 9, for Navajos meeting with Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, in which the Navajos lobbied for better conditions for their people. After spending his childhood on the reservation, Johnston was familiar with the Navajo language, a complicated spoken tongue understood by fewer than about 28 people-mostly anthropologists and missionaries-outside of the Navajo Nation. The project got its start in the early 1940s with Philip Johnston, an American World War I veteran who grew up on a Navajo reservation, where his father was a missionary. They often worked under extreme duress and spectacular violence, never once wavering from their mission: Using their complex language to outsmart and outmaneuver their foes. The Navajo Code Talkers toiled in relative obscurity, silenced by classified mandates and a tendency to keep their heroic efforts to themselves.

military to send important messages in near-total secrecy. These 'Code Talkers,' as they came to be known, occupied the front lines of major battles in the Pacific, allowing the U.S. As members of the Navajo Nation, they were recruited for an audacious project, forming a network of communications operators who transmitted information through their unique and unwritten language. Yet all of these men, and hundreds more, were key figures in bringing the Allied forces to victory. While names like Patton, Hitler, and Churchill occur frequently in discussions of World War II, relatively few people mention names like John Brown, Chester Nez, Lloyd Oliver, or Allen Dale June.

Daywalkers navajo