November 27, 2018 • 44 mins
In WWII the US Marines devised an unbreakable code-within-a-code made from Navajo, one of the most linguistically difficult languages in the world. A handful of Navajos sent messages on the frontlines in a language they’d been forbidden to speak as school kids.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry.
So this is stuff you should know. This is gonna
be a good one. This is a grabstor joint. Did
(00:24):
you want to talk about super first? Are you kidding? Yeah?
I was kidding. Oh, I thought you were serious. Yeah,
it was bad soup, but I meant that bad. Yeah,
I mean, right before we started recording, like this is
how how awesome things are around here, we were talking
about how bad your French onion soup was. How do
you mess up French onions? Yeah, that's what I was wondering.
(00:45):
And he said, say that, I want to talk about this,
and I thought you were serious. Yeah, I was kidding. Well,
and here we are. I was kidding. Yeah, And then
we were talking about the soup anyway, How do you
mess up French onion soup? It's like beef broth, salt, onions,
cheese bread. Yeah, they put too much in it, melted
in the crock pot. Yes, yes, this. The onions they
used were way too sweet. I think they used like
(01:05):
onions dipped in sugar. It was just not good. Yeah,
not good. You can tell we shouldn't call them out publicly.
That'd be pretty mean. Sure, I mean, they just don't
know what they're doing with soup. It's fine, but they're
a soup restaurant. There are a lot of sup restaurants. Yeah,
(01:26):
do you remember that, dumb one? I think they're out
of business. Now, let us surprise you. Haven't dumb about
let us surprise you, buddy, soup and sell love that
that's out of business, right, Yeah, there's something called sweet
Tomatoes that's basically the I think I've heard of that. Yep. Hey,
I like a good soup and salad joint. Yeah, so
(01:47):
what was wrong with let us surprise you? I don't know.
I just I don't like cute see names unless it's
on The Simpsons. And I think the teas were made
of carrots. Yeah for sure. Well that leads us right
into Navajo code talkers. Exactly. Quite well, we should say
right out of the gate that, um, we're well, like
you just said, we're talking about Navajo code talkers. There
(02:09):
were plenty of other code talkers from other Native American tribes.
This episode is mostly about the Navajo code talkers because
there were so many of them and so much is
known about the codes that they made. But we'll also
mention other tribes as well, Yes, and straight up respect
to all of them. It always kind of stinks when
(02:31):
one thing gets all the glory when there were many
factions of that thing. So yeah, right, But I think
that's better than just naming this episode like how code
talkers work, but only talking about the Navajo code talkers.
I think we covered everything right, agreed. So Um, if
you have ever seen or familiar with a movie called
(02:54):
wind Talkers, as have you seen it? I didn't see it,
but I did look it up today, and it is
widely regarded as not only garbage, a garbage movie, but
a real disservice to do a great to do a
movie about the Navajo code talkers, but it's really a
movie about Nick Cage, right, directed by John Woo. Yeah,
(03:17):
it's a violent war movie that happened to be structured
around a really interesting historical plot, right, Like, let's let's
take this really amazing story from history and and let's
morph it into a story about a white soldier. It's like, um,
dancing to Havana. Nights. Basically, Oh, it's funny, it is. Yeah,
(03:44):
the wind Talkers. I do I do not indorse that film.
I do not either, and neither of us have seen it.
We still don't endorse that. No, I don't. I just
need to see the reviews on that one. But the
the point of it was that there was a Native
American I don't know if he's a Nava or not
um in that movie because again haven't seen it, but
(04:05):
UM who was who was charged with speaking his native
tongue to someone else on the other end of the
line at the front lines of battle in the Pacific
Theater during World War two, Um to transmit messages in code,
in an unbreakable code, and that actually happened, Like that
(04:25):
part of the story happened, and it was true that
there were in World War Two Native Americans in large
part Navajo who were speaking to one another in Navajo,
like on Guadalcanal, or um in the Marianas or the
Marshall Islands or Okinawa, who were there at all of
these major massive battles in the Pacific Theater between the
(04:50):
United States and Japan. UM that actually eventually led to
this island hopping process led to them the atomic bombs
being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Mariannas. Yeah,
code so uh well complex to our dumb ears. To
(05:10):
the Navajoo, they were just like, this is just our language. True,
but even if you're a linguist, you're like, this is
extraordinarily difficult language. Yeah, but so complex that UM it
confounded the Japanese, who were really good at busting codes,
and they were like, I don't know what's going on here.
You're right, yeah, this is I've never heard anything like this,
which was a huge reversal because prior to the institution
(05:34):
of um Navajo code talkers and I think nineteen forty two,
like late nineteen forty two, UM, the Japanese had our
goat with our coded transmissions. Because for the for the
number one, there were a number of Japanese people who
had been educated in the US in between World War
One world War two UM and had gone back to
(05:56):
Japan prior to World War two, and they were totally
fluent in English, so they could speak English like up down,
in sideways. Plus on top of that, they were really
good at breaking our coats, so they knew basically everything
we were going to do every step of the way.
So the Navajo code talkers coming into the Pacific theater,
was it reversed our fortunes? There's there's it's not an
(06:19):
overstatement to say that they basically helped the US take
the Pacific from Japan, not single handedly, but through their coat.
Yeah for sure. All right, So let's talk about the
Navajo UH in general. To begin with Native American tribe
UM that inhabited the American southeast or what you know
(06:40):
now we know it as an American Southwest. Back then
it was known as the South. Yeah, exactly. And you're like,
what this isn't the coast American Southwest? I wish everyone
could see because Josh literally just pointed in the other direction.
I wonder if you pointed, wet Uh you pointed that way?
Is that west? I don't even know. Hold on, now,
(07:01):
that's that's north. Okay, the American South, the American South North? Uh.
They the original um people's were they believed from Asia?
Maybe ironically in the end, when you see how the
story goes, UH and settled in the southwest round fourteen
hundred ce UM in the sixteen hundreds, UH, A lot
(07:28):
of things changed the next few hundred years were uh,
they were warring with the Spanish, they were warring with
other Native American tribes. And then that was all kind
of leading up to the eighteen hundreds when the United
States popped up and said, hey, um, here's what we're
gonna do. We're going to wreck your economy. We're going
(07:49):
to destroy your crops and livestock and poison your wells
and kill all your buffalo and put you on reservations
and march you, um, march you to New Mexico, where
your new home will be and what will be known
as the Long Walk. Yeah. It was basically their their
trail of tears. Yeah, exactly. It was just right out
(08:10):
of the Westward Expansion playbook. Um. And so the Navajo
found themselves. When was that the mid it was? I think, yeah,
And like why that, I mean, it's important for a
lot of reasons. But um, the men who ended up
being the Navajo code talkers in World War Two, their
(08:31):
grandparents were these people that were forced to go on
the Long Walk. Yes, and it wasn't you know, hundreds
and hundreds of years later, like direct descendants that ended
up fighting for the United States. Yes, and this is
not like, hey, do you mind moving over here? It was.
It was very much like the Trail of Tears. It
was movement three hundred miles to a reservation against their will. Um,
(08:56):
at the barrel of a gun. Yeah, like I don't
want to go okay, I'll shoot you, yes, exactly. There
were reports of UM, of the injured, of the tired,
people who fell behind were just shot by the U. S. Infantry. Um.
There was at least one family that reported that their
pregnant daughter was UM. They were forced away from her.
She was kept behind and they heard her being shot
(09:19):
as well. It was. It was. It was just a
violation and atrocity done to the Navajo like get was
done to so many other Native American groups. And by
the nineteenth century, like basically eighteen fifty seven on the
Navajo lived exclusively on reservations in the in the Southwest. Yeah.
And starting in about the eighteen seventies, the U. S.
(09:40):
Government said, here's what we're gonna do. Um, you have
to assimilate into American society. We want you to forget
your culture as you knew it. You can't speak your
native language anymore. Um, We're gonna round up your kids
and send them to American boarding schools, teach them to
read and write in English only. Uh. And you're going
to be punished and for bidden from speaking your native tongue,
(10:02):
from singing in your native tongue. Yes, you will be
beaten if we catch you speaking Navajo to one another.
And they, like I think you just said, they would
kidnap children, take them to these schools, just like they
did with the Aboriginal tribes in Australia, UM, just like
they did with the first Americans in UM, the first
nations in Canada. And it was just not only have
(10:25):
we taken your land, not only have we forced you
to live in this one area that no one else
wants to live in, like we want to destroy your
culture now, like we're going after your culture. We just
don't want to obliterate you guys completely. We'll let you
live but under these these conditions, and we're not We're
gonna murder your culture. And so not only were these
(10:45):
code talkers the grandchildren or the grandsons of the people
who went on the Long Walk, they were the very
people who went to these Indian schools and were beaten
for speaking Navajoa. And then about nineteen forty two, the
United States military, specifically the Marine showed up and said, Hey,
(11:08):
we'd love for you to come speak Navajo officially for
the United States government. Would you mind doing that? Yeah,
And this was after World War One. It went on
in World War One. Actually, Um, World War two got
all the press, and the Navajo of course did more
than anyone else, Like you said, but in World War
One there were um. In nineteen eighteen, there was a
captain from the Ontywcond Infantry Regiment who heard UM two
(11:34):
Choctaw soldiers speaking in their native tongue and was like, Man,
we're getting hammered with the Germans and the French cracking
our codes. So I think that this language could be
of use to us because it's really complex. Germans have
no idea what what's going on with your language, and
I think we could put you to use. And so
(11:54):
the very first code talkers, I think, were these Choc
talk code talkers in World War One. Yeah. The well,
we were fighting with the French when we were talking
to the French, but the Germans spoke French and English
and we're using regular telephone lines in World War One,
I guess they just had them tapped. So they were
just eavesdropping and we might as well have been speaking
German for as well as they were translating these coded transmissions.
(12:18):
Now all of a sudden they're like, what is what
is this? We've never heard this language before ever. It's
just a couple of Choctaw guys talking to one another.
But it was for Germany an unbreakable code at least
as long as World War One was going on. Yeah,
and I don't think this early World War One code
was so much a code as like you're saying, like,
we're just gonna put a Choctaw on one end and
(12:40):
a Choctaw on the other end of the line, and
they'll just relay the messages that we tell them to
and their native tongue. And the Germans were like nine right.
The only word I could think of, uh holgan its
World War two rooms that would come years later. So, um,
(13:03):
it wasn't just Choctaw members of the Choctaw tribe who
were code talkers in World War One. Also the Comanche
played a role. Um the Fox which is also known
as the um oh Man I had it. Have you
ever heard the Fox tribe from I believe Mississippi I
(13:24):
don't think so you oh, you don't. Um. There was
also the Comanche. They played a big role in some
other tribes did as well. But there's like we're talking
a handful of people in the capacity, like you were saying,
it's like, uh, just say this in your native language
to this other guy who speaks your native language and
he'll tell you know, the guy on the other end
(13:45):
what you just said in English. Yeah. And here's the
rub I mean there. It is rich with irony throughout
this whole story. But here's the rub in World War
One is that Native Americans weren't even granted citizenship until
so the World War One code talkers were not even
American citizens yet they were doing this. Uh, and they
were not even recognized by the United States and acknowledged
(14:07):
and thanked until two thousand eight, right thousand eight, ten
years ago. France even recognized them in I think, did
you say that? Okay, So France recognized them first, and
it took another twenty years before the US recognized him officially. Unbelievable,
It is unbelievable. Um. But the the the problem with
(14:29):
World War One is it worked, but we became friendly
with Germany in between world War One and World War Two,
and Germany said, yeah, we're going to headge our bets here.
We're going to send some people to the United States
to learn Native American languages and culture so that if
we ever go to war with the United States again,
(14:51):
we'll have their number. And they did. Apparently there were
plenty of well, I don't know if plenty of the
right word, but there were Germans who spoke um, Cherokee, Comanche,
so that um, so much so that the some of
the American commanders in World War two were like, we
can't use Native American language because there's Germans who know
(15:12):
this already. They were compromised basically between World War One
and World War Two. You wanna take a break, Oh yes,
all right, let's take a break, and we're gonna come
back and talk about the dawn of World War two.
And a man named Philip Johnston. All right, so right
(15:49):
before World War two, UM, there was a training exercise
going on with UH, with soldiers from Michigan and Wisconsin.
There were Native American soldier is involved, and there was
a man UH and they were, you know, they were
testing out these coded transmissions. Are like, we didn't world
War one. Let's try it again. There was a man
there named Philip Johnston who was a white man, but
(16:11):
he actually grew up on a Navajo reservation. I think
he just read an article about this. Actually, Um, well, yeah,
he wasn't in the army at this time because they
brought him in like he was way too old, way
too old. But around this time I think he was
about fifty years old. Yeah, but he had the benefit
of growing up on a Navajo reservation. Considered himself a Navajo,
(16:33):
spoke the language following World War One and said, I
want to make a comeback, and I want to go
back and fight in World War two and start up
this crack team of Navajo code talkers. It was his idea.
And they said he went into the office of whatever
higher up general he needed to spoke some Navajo and
(16:53):
said this worked once, why can't it work twice? And
they was like, by George, I think you go onto something. Well,
they said, we'll give you, uh well of you a
chance to demonstrate this. So apparently in Los Angeles he
recruited four Navajo men who I guess he was friendly
with because, like you said, he considered himself Navaho. His
parents were missionaries. Um. And apparently he spoke Navajo so
(17:15):
well that at age nine, he served as the official
translator for a Navajo delegation that had gone to Washington,
d C. To lobby for better treatment and rights for
the Navajo nation. Which is amazing because, as you'll learn,
the not a lot of because there were other white
(17:35):
people who spoke Navajo that tried to be code talkers
and none of them made the cut. No, such a
hard language, right, So this guy must have just had
an ear for it too and was raised with it.
But um, he uh, he said, we I know you
guys are trying to make a code. I've got this language.
I've got these four guys from Los Angeles with me.
Just give him a shot. And so they gave him
(17:56):
a shot, I think Camp Elliott, and um, they gave two.
They took the two of the four Navajo guys, broke
them into pairs, put them in separate rooms, and said, here,
say this in Navajo, say this English phrase the Eagle
Lands at midnight. Will say, all right, that old bit,
and tell your buddies and see what they say. So
(18:18):
they transmitted the Eagle Lands at Midnight or whatever it was. Um,
over the phone in Navajo. The guys in the other
room took it in Navajo, translated it back into English
in like a minute. And the guys at Camp Elliot
were pretty impressed by this. They said, we're going to
bring in some German and Japanese people to listen. And
(18:39):
they're like, did you guys get that? I have no
idea what they said nine and whatever the Japanese word
is for now? Do you know that? Uh yet yet?
It's like that sounds a lot like Russians. The Japanese
word from now they say no so infrequent. I was
about to say, you know why you don't know that
because all you say is yes right when you go
over there, Yeah, sure, I'll take more more please, They
(19:02):
just bang my bowl on the table. So so yeah,
they they they actually didn't do that. I'm kidding, of course,
but they said this is great, and this is the
trick was not only was it um like basically impossible
to crack, but like you're saying, it was super fast,
way faster than machine codes, right, So that's a huge
(19:24):
advantage that this this offered, was you're using um Navajo
speakers to send a coded message. Prior to this In
an addition to this, you would you would use basically
machines that used algorithms to encode and decode a message,
and it could take hours hours. If you're trying to
(19:45):
send a desperate message on a frontline battle in the
Pacific theater, you don't have hours for that thing to
get across. So the idea that you could do the
same thing in minutes in a code that you were
just positive the Japanese would have no idea what to
do with that was a huge advantage for sure. Yeah,
And like the grabs are pointed out, it was taking
(20:07):
a long time with the code machines that the Germans
in Japanese were cracking anyway. So this was the solution.
There was like no no downside to it, alright. So,
like we said, Johnston was Philip Johnson was far too
old because he was a World War One veteran. Uh,
they gave him a special commission, said you're now a
(20:27):
staff sergeant and the Marines again or I don't know
if use of the marine or in the army initially,
do you know, I don't know, But at any rate,
he was in the Marines this time, and they said
you're gonna lead the Code Talker project go out and recruit,
So he went to reservations, recruited young men, and between
three and four hundred of these young men became UH
(20:51):
code talkers. He recruited more than that, but a lot
of them failed out for very various reasons, like you know,
they still have to go through boot camp and all
that stuff, so he still have to be a sold
or on top of it. Although it was a kind
of a truncated version of boot camp because they had
to get them in there quick. They needed them so badly.
They're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fine. Yeah, we
(21:11):
need to take you to code school basically. Yeah. But
the whole thing started with UM thirty. They originally recruited
thirty Navajo speakers. One of them dropped out, so there
were twenty nine original Navajo code talkers and they were
put to work initially creating the code. Because very importantly,
(21:32):
the Navajo code talkers not only spoke to one another
in Navajo, which was incomprehensible to basically anybody living it
listening to it who didn't speak it, UM, they would
also use a code. They would use code words in Navajo.
So what they created was a code within a code,
(21:54):
and it was as unbreakable as as any any codes
ever been come up that anyone's ever come up with.
I think we should you and I can't speak navajo. Uh,
I'm not, I'm I'm rusty. I think we should play
just a little bit of navajo, all right, and then
I'll translate lying Kai a kid joggi hanadia lago k
(22:23):
nazad leko a certain jolago nadia and yeah, opens is
so what you just heard in navajo was um. This
is from the parable of the prodigal son from the
movie Wind Talkers. What you just heard was not long
after that, the younger son got together all he had
(22:45):
set off for a distant country and they're squandered his
wealth in wild living, something everybody does from time to time.
But that was that was what you just heard in navajo. Um.
And it's it's so foreign sounding um for a reason,
like it's a really difficult language in that like the
(23:05):
same vowel can have four different types of intonation and
four different meanings. So one word can have four different
meanings based on the whether you know, you go up
or you speak through your nose or whatever. But you're
saying the same word, you're just intoning it differently, and
that just changes the meaning dramatically. That was one reason
(23:27):
why it was so impenetrable. Yeah, And like you said,
they they memorized five code words, three different versions of
the alphabet, and went to war. I mean I used
the word irony. I don't mean that's that's sort of
undersells it what was going on and why these men would,
(23:48):
um would sign up for something like this, and and
Ed points out like you can't get into the head
of them or explain every person's motivation because it was
all different. But um, through interviews, you know what what
sort of stood out was that they still even though
that the United States had stomped them down into near oblivion,
(24:09):
they still had a tie to that land and that
was their land. And regardless of what had gone on
in the past, Um, the Germans and the Japanese were
uh were invaders, that they were a threat to their
holy land. They were still a common enemy between the
United States and the Navajo. Yeah, I mean, it's just
(24:30):
just so much about their people that they could just
put all the other stuff aside, and the genocide and
the long walk and the trail of tears and say, well,
this this is still my land even though I'm on
a reservation, and I don't I want to help protect it. Amazing. Yes,
some of them were joined up because there, um, they
(24:51):
subscribed to the Navajo warrior culture, and the Navajo definitely
had their own warrior warrior culture, although that wasn't like
necessarily the central focus of their ulture. Others were like,
oh man, you're gonna get me off of this reservation
and I'm gonna go travel the world. I've never been
on a bus before. Let's go. Um. Someone were like,
I like this, g I Bill you're talking about. Um.
(25:12):
Others were drafted, didn't want to go, but they were
still drafted and they went. So they were just like
to to paint it any other way is to make it,
like to give it the wind talker treatment. That's not
the stuff you should know. Way, there were as many
different people. I think there were four hundred and twenty
one Navajo code talkers who ended up serving in World
(25:34):
War Two. I'm sure there were four hundred and twenty
one different reasons for why they went. That's just the
way it is there. They're people, Yeah, and we're talking
about people here dollar short day late. So let's talk
a little bit about this code within a code. Um
(25:55):
here here's one example. So troops moving forward to the
late is what the grab stirt came up with. And
they wouldn't just get on the horn with their Navajo
uh counterpart on the other end and say troops moving
forward to the lake in Navajo. They would substitute in
different words. Sometimes they would spell out some words one
(26:17):
letter at a time, with that letter being represented by
a word, like the first letter in the word that
they say. And it was the I mean, there were
there were rules for the code, but the person on
the other end, they were so in sync with one
another that they didn't necessarily look at a chart and say, well,
(26:38):
this is means this and this means this. They were
just able to converse rather organically within this code within
the code, right, and they all knew that that code
that was like this means this and this means this. Yeah.
But yeah, from from from the research, it seems like
they were able to shift and like you said, make
it organic on the fly, and they knew what one
(26:59):
another was saying kind of throughout the playbook a little bit,
I imagine in certain circumstances. Uh, and I'm sure the
American um, you know, the generals and the people in
charge were just like, just do it, man, just do
your thing, or they were like, I have no idea
what you just said. They had no idea. They threw
out the playbook a lot of times. They had to
(27:21):
do that because there weren't equivalents of certain words, like
they didn't have words for bombardment and and shell casing
and things like that, because they didn't have those things
in their culture, so they had to make up things
that they would be able to understand. Both ways, well,
they were also so there was an an alphabet, right,
so every three alphabets three Yes, that's right. So there
(27:43):
were three different words for every letter of the alphabet.
It's amazing, okay, UM, But there's something that is really
easy to look past that we really have to to think.
This is one of the reasons why this is so unbreakable.
If if you UM wanted to use the letter I,
well you would say the Navajo word for ice, okay,
(28:04):
But the Navajo word for ice doesn't have that It
doesn't begin with the letter I. They probably didn't have
a word for ice though, But that's funny people, well
know they The weird thing is is that they did
they did. Yes, they have ice. It was their most
closely related to a Native Alaskan tongue. Why they think
it's like evidence, it's linguistic evidence. They came across the
(28:25):
bearing land bridge. Um. So yeah, they also have a
word for shark, which is like, that doesn't make any
sense either if they they're they're from Arizona, basically in
New Mexico. That's what I thought. Yeah, they're like Chevy Chase, um.
But they but they have like a lot of They
have one for salmon, copperhead salmon, and that's you know
(28:47):
a lot of those in New Mexico. Yeah, it is delicious.
But the point is is the Navajo word um for
ice doesn't necessarily begin with ice. So even if you
knew Navajo, you wouldn't necessary really know that this is
the word for the letter I. And then to confound
it even more if there's three different words for the
letter I. Even if you're spelling like, um, well, what's
(29:12):
the word with multiple eyes? Hurry up and give me
one quick? Uh elicit Yes, okay, if you're spelling illicit
out you could use two different words for I, and
that cuts down on letter or in this case, code
word repetition, which is one of the easiest ways to
break a code. Look for repetitions and pair those up
(29:33):
with the letters that are used most frequently in English.
So if you're using three different code words for a
single letter, you can mix it up while you're spelling
it out, makes it even more impenetrable, Like this is
just such a gorgeous code. Yeah, they used um imagery
a lot of times, which is makes it kind of
(29:53):
strangely lyrical, like a um, a die bomber was a
chicken hawk, a submarine was an iron fish. Uh. And
then they also use you know, you heard a Cockney
rhyming slang um, which is she's. We could do a
podcast on that, but that'd be kind of cool. Um.
I won't even get into that. But it makes basically
(30:14):
make compound words in an English sound like a word
uh in the message. So um. The examples that the
grabster got was like the words secured. They would say.
The Navajo words for sheep cured or dispatch became dog
is patch in Navajo though, But so even if you
knew Navajo and you heard dog is patch. You wouldn't
(30:37):
know that that meant dispatch, right, And if you didn't
know Navajo, you wouldn't be able to hear and be like, oh,
that rhymes with dispatched. I'll bet that's what they said.
It doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard before in
your life. Yeah. And like you said, they would. They
were so familiar with it and comfortable with it that
they would switch it up on the fly. Uh. And
and you know, again, technically they had um they would
(31:00):
do something to alert the person that was like a
system in place to say like now we're going to
use this version, but they were they didn't even need
to do that really, right, That just seemed like a formality.
It sounds like, Yeah. And I think one of the
reasons why they were so able to shift like that, um,
because these these guys who were raised in the Indian schools,
(31:25):
they had to speak to one another Navajo like surreptitiously.
So they had to be able to shift on the fly,
not just between like um nuance and Navajo, which is
a very nuanced language to begin with, but also between
Navajo and English depending on who is coming their way. Um.
So there was a a I think it's my impression
(31:45):
that from their the treatment in Indian school, UM, it
would have made it easier for them to understand what
somebody was saying when they broke the rules of the
language really quickly. Yeah, they'd be able to follow. And then, Chuck,
there's one other thing that made this code even more beautiful.
It wasn't written down in There was no book, no document,
(32:10):
no text that you could get and teach yourself Navajo.
You couldn't get it. And like you said, even some
like white kids that were raised out on trading posts
and spoke Navaho their whole life, they washed out of
the code talker program. They had basically a success rate
non Navajo, UM had a success rate basically zero in
(32:31):
the code talker program for Navajo code. It was just
that hard and that nuanced. Amazing. Alright, let's take another break. Yeah,
I'm pretty I'm pretty jazzed up here. Yes, all right,
and we'll come back and talk about how this how
this really affected the war right after this alright, So,
(33:10):
like we said, at this point in the war, when
they were brought in uh, the Navajo code talkers, it
was the fighting in Europe was dwindling and the Pacific
Theater is where things were really happening. And so the
first action for the actual Navajo code talkers were at Guadalcanal.
And I hope we didn't paint a picture that they're
(33:31):
sitting in offices, talking to one another in an air
conditioned office on telephones and just sending orders to like
go bomb this place on Saturday. Uh. A lot of
times these men are on the front lines and relaying
um positions and uh, what's what it's like on the
ground and what's going on. It wasn't just directives to
go do this. Uh. They were relaying important information like
(33:54):
live in the moment on the front lines. And to
add to this, there was confusion a lot of times,
even among American soldiers. Like to an American soldier fifty
feet away, a Navajo code talker might look like a Japanese. Uh. Person,
were these like the very dumbest soldiers of all? I
(34:15):
don't know, man, I mean it's on record that there
was friendly fire because of this, So so they were
actually fired on. I saw that, like they had like
guns pointed at them at some point and would be
like marched over to be interrogated. It was such that
they felt like they needed to assign them personal guards,
which was freaking Nick Cage. And that's what that movie
was about, is that he was a white soldier assigned
(34:36):
to guard one of the Navajo cold code talkers because
they were being mistaken for Japanese soldiers, right, but he
was also secretly ordered to kill that code talkers then
let them fall into the hands of the Japanese. Yeah.
I wonder if that's a thing or if that was
wholly created for that movie. I don't know, like it's
a I don't know. I could see it go both ways. Yeah,
(34:59):
And I don't how smart the soldiers were, uh and
and confusing. I don't think, right, I don't think it
happened very often. And I think all it has to
happen is two or three times and all of a
sudden that's like part of the legend, you know. Um,
But it did happen, I mean, like it was. It
happened from time time. There was a guy named um,
I think George McCabe who was a Navajo code talker
(35:22):
who was taken prisoner by a fellow American UM because
he was standing in a chow line on the beach
at Guadalcanal, waiting to get food, and the guy was like,
you look Japanese. That's exactly what he did, pointed a
gun at him and said you're coming with me, and
I'm sure it was like, uh, sorry, but no, William McCabe,
(35:44):
I'm sorry, um, but that was that's Yeah. If you
look at a picture of a Navajo code talker, you
look at a picture of a Japanese person, I don't
see the resemblance. You should have been on the front lines,
my friend. I would have been like to dude, what
are you doing. Yeah. The language itself, and again this
(36:05):
is kind of funny because the language sounds nothing like Japanese,
but sometimes US radio operators would jam the frequency. I guess.
I mean the grabs are said because they mistook it
for Japanese. I imagine they just heard a foreign language
and just jammed it. Um. I don't know if they
necessarily thought it sounded like Japanese sounds sure, Yeah, maybe
(36:27):
they had no idea what Japanese or Navajo even sounded like,
and was just like it ain't English. Maybe they were
under orders for like, yeah, if it's not an English jam, yeah,
possibly could see that. So these like we said the
speed was one of the real keys, and just how
quickly they could get these messages delivered. Uh, and it
allowed them to UH. Here's a great here's a great
(36:49):
quote from Philip Johnson, who started the program. He said,
during the first forty eight hours and UH visit Eo Jima.
He said, while we were landing in consolid our short positions,
I had six Navajo radio nets operating around the clock.
And that period alone, they sent and received more than
eight hundred messages without an error in forty eight hours.
(37:10):
Eight hundred messages, no mistakes, no mistakes. That's amazing. And
they're relaying these messages again in minutes and each of
them would have taken hours to decode without the Navajo
code talkers. There was another quote from a guy named
Major Howard Conner who was on Iwo Jima as well
in the Signal Corps, and he said, paraphrasing here that
(37:31):
the Marines would not have taken Ewo Jima had it
not been for the Navajo code talkers. The entire operation
Yvo GiMA, you know, the very famous like flag raising statue,
Zevo GiMA um basically a turning point in the Pacific
that the entire operation was done in Navajo. That was
(37:52):
what was spoken over the radios for the entire operation.
It's amazing there really is. I mean, like if you
think about how many American lives were saved by that,
that's I mean, it was just such a direct contribution
to the war. Yeah, um, he would GiMA. That was huge. Yeah,
I mean that's all you can say. Yeah, this this
deserves its own movie treatment, like sort of like hidden figures,
(38:13):
like these minority voices who really had this huge impact
that never got their due. And you know with the
Navajo code talkers, they came back to the after the
war and um it was classified what went on until nine.
Apparently they may have uh done this in Vietnam and career,
(38:34):
although I don't think anyone has totally knows that for sure. Yeah,
but they did not. You would think like, oh, and
after nineteen sixty eight they were just put on a
pedestal and praised um all throughout the United States. That
is not true. They were basically sent back to the
reservations with what awaited them there, which was poverty and
(38:54):
hardship and alcoholism and disenfranchisement and um some I mean
some of them we're we're lucky enough to boot strap
up from military mansion. I think ones that stayed in
the military afterward made a career out of it tended
to do better than ones that you know, went back
right after the war. Some of them were able to
(39:16):
get into college. Um. Some of them tried to buy
houses on the reservation through the g I Bill, which
was very much their right as veterans after World War two. Um,
But through a fluke of the treaties that put them
on the reservation, they don't they didn't actually own the land.
(39:37):
The land that they owned was held in trust, so
they couldn't show the bank actually own this land or
the guy am trying to buy this land from owns
the land. So the g I Bill was useless for
a lot of them, which is a big black eye
on it was just basically par for the course for
how most of them were treated afterward. Um, I mean,
(40:00):
just right back on the reservation. It was just the
usual reservation life again. Nineteen sixty nine, there was a
reunion at the fourth Marine Division. In seventy one, Nixon
awarded them a certificate of thanks yea and a light
punch in the arm. An old tricky Dick. Uh. In
two August fourteenth was declared National Code Talker Day. That
(40:22):
was for all code talkers. Yeah, not just Navajo code talkers,
but those original twenty nine. We're given a Congressional Gold
medal in two thousand and uh. In two thousand fourteen,
on June four the final original code talker, Navajo code
talker Chester Nez, passed away. And uh, just look at
the picture of Chester Nez in Easy, just that sweet
(40:46):
face and he's got the veteran's hat on that says
Navajo code talker on it. I love those hats. Pretty amazing. Um.
The the uh, the awards ceremony, so they were awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor and two thousand the original
twenty nine. But when they actually presented the award in
two thousand one, by that time there are only four
(41:07):
of them left alive. And that's a big criticism too,
Um that it was like, you could probably done this
a little a little sooner while they were alive. Still,
it might have taken sixty something years to just sort
of get that ceremony in order right. They wanted to
get everything just right. But that was amazing, And yeah,
(41:30):
hopefully somebody will make a movie about it that's not
mostly about Nick Cage's character the White Guy. Uh. If
you want to know more about code talkers, you can
search them on the internet and there's some fascinating stuff
out there. Oh and Chuck, if you want to know
more about Navajo code talkers and you happened to ever
be in Kyenta, Arizona, there's a burger king there and
(41:54):
it has basically a Navajo code talker museum. It's basically
just a case, but it counts. It qualifies as a
mini museum. Sure, grab a whopper learned something. Yeah, and
since I said that, it's time for a listener Mayo,
I'm gonna call this easy Bake oven follow up um
(42:14):
from Oregon. So guys just listen to easy Bake ovens Um.
I've always been a big believer in kids playing with
whatever toys they want, and as a kid, I spent
a great deal of time playing in the dirt with
my brothers, making roads and parking lots for our hot wheels.
Flash forward twenty years my son wanted me to take
him to the toy store to spend some six birthday money.
(42:35):
Sixth birthday money, I followed him as he perused the
remote control cars various action figures, and he disappeared around
the corner, and before I could get to the other
alda find him, he came tromping back holding an easy
bake oven. He asked me if he had enough money
to buy it, and he did, Uh, this about twenty
bucks as he As we walked to the counter, I
(42:55):
asked him if he wanted me to carry it for
him put it in a cart, because the box was
about as big as he was, and he insisted on
carrying it himself. Although I've always encouraged him to play
with what he wants, I was surprised that he wanted
to carry it himself. His dad was not always so
open minded voice playing with what he called girl toys,
and probably still isn't Uh. We are no longer together,
(43:16):
needless to say. Anyway, we pay for the oven and
my son carries it to the car. He won't let
me put it in the trunk or even in the
seat next to him. He held it on his lap
the whole way home. The stories just adorbs in every way.
While we were driving, he examined the box and made
a harrump sound asked him what was wrong, and he said, uh,
that he was mad. And asked him why. He said,
(43:38):
the boxes pink and there's only a girl on it,
but boys like to cook to Mom told him I agree.
Uh so I guess you could say he has always
been woke. Uh. He made many treats with his oven
over the years. And I even have a photo of
him somewhere wearing his Grandma's frillly cooking apron with a
big smile on his face. And that is from Davina H.
M Berry in Portland, Oregon. Another Emburry Is there another one? Yeah? Really? Yeah.
(44:03):
We never really figured out how to say that last name,
but there was like within the last month or two
there was an m Burry. Weird. I wonder if it
was her, thanks a lot to Vina. Yeah, maybe maybe
it was. I think the other one was with the
E that's with an eye. Huh. Yeah. I will figure
it out one day. Uh. If you want to, if
you're an Emberry or an Embury or whatever, you want
(44:26):
to get in touch with us, you can join us
on social Just go do stuff you should know dot
com and find all the links there or send us
all an email. The stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and there's Jerry.
So this is stuff you should know. This is gonna
be a good one. This is a grabstor joint. Did
(00:24):
you want to talk about super first? Are you kidding? Yeah?
I was kidding. Oh, I thought you were serious. Yeah,
it was bad soup, but I meant that bad. Yeah,
I mean, right before we started recording, like this is
how how awesome things are around here, we were talking
about how bad your French onion soup was. How do
you mess up French onions? Yeah, that's what I was wondering.
(00:45):
And he said, say that, I want to talk about this,
and I thought you were serious. Yeah, I was kidding. Well,
and here we are. I was kidding. Yeah, And then
we were talking about the soup anyway, How do you
mess up French onion soup? It's like beef broth, salt, onions,
cheese bread. Yeah, they put too much in it, melted
in the crock pot. Yes, yes, this. The onions they
used were way too sweet. I think they used like
(01:05):
onions dipped in sugar. It was just not good. Yeah,
not good. You can tell we shouldn't call them out publicly.
That'd be pretty mean. Sure, I mean, they just don't
know what they're doing with soup. It's fine, but they're
a soup restaurant. There are a lot of sup restaurants. Yeah,
(01:26):
do you remember that, dumb one? I think they're out
of business. Now, let us surprise you. Haven't dumb about
let us surprise you, buddy, soup and sell love that
that's out of business, right, Yeah, there's something called sweet
Tomatoes that's basically the I think I've heard of that. Yep. Hey,
I like a good soup and salad joint. Yeah, so
(01:47):
what was wrong with let us surprise you? I don't know.
I just I don't like cute see names unless it's
on The Simpsons. And I think the teas were made
of carrots. Yeah for sure. Well that leads us right
into Navajo code talkers. Exactly. Quite well, we should say
right out of the gate that, um, we're well, like
you just said, we're talking about Navajo code talkers. There
(02:09):
were plenty of other code talkers from other Native American tribes.
This episode is mostly about the Navajo code talkers because
there were so many of them and so much is
known about the codes that they made. But we'll also
mention other tribes as well, Yes, and straight up respect
to all of them. It always kind of stinks when
(02:31):
one thing gets all the glory when there were many
factions of that thing. So yeah, right, But I think
that's better than just naming this episode like how code
talkers work, but only talking about the Navajo code talkers.
I think we covered everything right, agreed. So Um, if
you have ever seen or familiar with a movie called
(02:54):
wind Talkers, as have you seen it? I didn't see it,
but I did look it up today, and it is
widely regarded as not only garbage, a garbage movie, but
a real disservice to do a great to do a
movie about the Navajo code talkers, but it's really a
movie about Nick Cage, right, directed by John Woo. Yeah,
(03:17):
it's a violent war movie that happened to be structured
around a really interesting historical plot, right, Like, let's let's
take this really amazing story from history and and let's
morph it into a story about a white soldier. It's like, um,
dancing to Havana. Nights. Basically, Oh, it's funny, it is. Yeah,
(03:44):
the wind Talkers. I do I do not indorse that film.
I do not either, and neither of us have seen it.
We still don't endorse that. No, I don't. I just
need to see the reviews on that one. But the
the point of it was that there was a Native
American I don't know if he's a Nava or not
um in that movie because again haven't seen it, but
(04:05):
UM who was who was charged with speaking his native
tongue to someone else on the other end of the
line at the front lines of battle in the Pacific
Theater during World War two, Um to transmit messages in code,
in an unbreakable code, and that actually happened, Like that
(04:25):
part of the story happened, and it was true that
there were in World War Two Native Americans in large
part Navajo who were speaking to one another in Navajo,
like on Guadalcanal, or um in the Marianas or the
Marshall Islands or Okinawa, who were there at all of
these major massive battles in the Pacific Theater between the
(04:50):
United States and Japan. UM that actually eventually led to
this island hopping process led to them the atomic bombs
being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the Mariannas. Yeah,
code so uh well complex to our dumb ears. To
(05:10):
the Navajoo, they were just like, this is just our language. True,
but even if you're a linguist, you're like, this is
extraordinarily difficult language. Yeah, but so complex that UM it
confounded the Japanese, who were really good at busting codes,
and they were like, I don't know what's going on here.
You're right, yeah, this is I've never heard anything like this,
which was a huge reversal because prior to the institution
(05:34):
of um Navajo code talkers and I think nineteen forty two,
like late nineteen forty two, UM, the Japanese had our
goat with our coded transmissions. Because for the for the
number one, there were a number of Japanese people who
had been educated in the US in between World War
One world War two UM and had gone back to
(05:56):
Japan prior to World War two, and they were totally
fluent in English, so they could speak English like up down,
in sideways. Plus on top of that, they were really
good at breaking our coats, so they knew basically everything
we were going to do every step of the way.
So the Navajo code talkers coming into the Pacific theater,
was it reversed our fortunes? There's there's it's not an
(06:19):
overstatement to say that they basically helped the US take
the Pacific from Japan, not single handedly, but through their coat.
Yeah for sure. All right, So let's talk about the
Navajo UH in general. To begin with Native American tribe
UM that inhabited the American southeast or what you know
(06:40):
now we know it as an American Southwest. Back then
it was known as the South. Yeah, exactly. And you're like,
what this isn't the coast American Southwest? I wish everyone
could see because Josh literally just pointed in the other direction.
I wonder if you pointed, wet Uh you pointed that way?
Is that west? I don't even know. Hold on, now,
(07:01):
that's that's north. Okay, the American South, the American South North? Uh.
They the original um people's were they believed from Asia?
Maybe ironically in the end, when you see how the
story goes, UH and settled in the southwest round fourteen
hundred ce UM in the sixteen hundreds, UH, A lot
(07:28):
of things changed the next few hundred years were uh,
they were warring with the Spanish, they were warring with
other Native American tribes. And then that was all kind
of leading up to the eighteen hundreds when the United
States popped up and said, hey, um, here's what we're
gonna do. We're going to wreck your economy. We're going
(07:49):
to destroy your crops and livestock and poison your wells
and kill all your buffalo and put you on reservations
and march you, um, march you to New Mexico, where
your new home will be and what will be known
as the Long Walk. Yeah. It was basically their their
trail of tears. Yeah, exactly. It was just right out
(08:10):
of the Westward Expansion playbook. Um. And so the Navajo
found themselves. When was that the mid it was? I think, yeah,
And like why that, I mean, it's important for a
lot of reasons. But um, the men who ended up
being the Navajo code talkers in World War Two, their
(08:31):
grandparents were these people that were forced to go on
the Long Walk. Yes, and it wasn't you know, hundreds
and hundreds of years later, like direct descendants that ended
up fighting for the United States. Yes, and this is
not like, hey, do you mind moving over here? It was.
It was very much like the Trail of Tears. It
was movement three hundred miles to a reservation against their will. Um,
(08:56):
at the barrel of a gun. Yeah, like I don't
want to go okay, I'll shoot you, yes, exactly. There
were reports of UM, of the injured, of the tired,
people who fell behind were just shot by the U. S. Infantry. Um.
There was at least one family that reported that their
pregnant daughter was UM. They were forced away from her.
She was kept behind and they heard her being shot
(09:19):
as well. It was. It was. It was just a
violation and atrocity done to the Navajo like get was
done to so many other Native American groups. And by
the nineteenth century, like basically eighteen fifty seven on the
Navajo lived exclusively on reservations in the in the Southwest. Yeah.
And starting in about the eighteen seventies, the U. S.
(09:40):
Government said, here's what we're gonna do. Um, you have
to assimilate into American society. We want you to forget
your culture as you knew it. You can't speak your
native language anymore. Um, We're gonna round up your kids
and send them to American boarding schools, teach them to
read and write in English only. Uh. And you're going
to be punished and for bidden from speaking your native tongue,
(10:02):
from singing in your native tongue. Yes, you will be
beaten if we catch you speaking Navajo to one another.
And they, like I think you just said, they would
kidnap children, take them to these schools, just like they
did with the Aboriginal tribes in Australia, UM, just like
they did with the first Americans in UM, the first
nations in Canada. And it was just not only have
(10:25):
we taken your land, not only have we forced you
to live in this one area that no one else
wants to live in, like we want to destroy your
culture now, like we're going after your culture. We just
don't want to obliterate you guys completely. We'll let you
live but under these these conditions, and we're not We're
gonna murder your culture. And so not only were these
(10:45):
code talkers the grandchildren or the grandsons of the people
who went on the Long Walk, they were the very
people who went to these Indian schools and were beaten
for speaking Navajoa. And then about nineteen forty two, the
United States military, specifically the Marine showed up and said, Hey,
(11:08):
we'd love for you to come speak Navajo officially for
the United States government. Would you mind doing that? Yeah,
And this was after World War One. It went on
in World War One. Actually, Um, World War two got
all the press, and the Navajo of course did more
than anyone else, Like you said, but in World War
One there were um. In nineteen eighteen, there was a
captain from the Ontywcond Infantry Regiment who heard UM two
(11:34):
Choctaw soldiers speaking in their native tongue and was like, Man,
we're getting hammered with the Germans and the French cracking
our codes. So I think that this language could be
of use to us because it's really complex. Germans have
no idea what what's going on with your language, and
I think we could put you to use. And so
(11:54):
the very first code talkers, I think, were these Choc
talk code talkers in World War One. Yeah. The well,
we were fighting with the French when we were talking
to the French, but the Germans spoke French and English
and we're using regular telephone lines in World War One,
I guess they just had them tapped. So they were
just eavesdropping and we might as well have been speaking
German for as well as they were translating these coded transmissions.
(12:18):
Now all of a sudden they're like, what is what
is this? We've never heard this language before ever. It's
just a couple of Choctaw guys talking to one another.
But it was for Germany an unbreakable code at least
as long as World War One was going on. Yeah,
and I don't think this early World War One code
was so much a code as like you're saying, like,
we're just gonna put a Choctaw on one end and
(12:40):
a Choctaw on the other end of the line, and
they'll just relay the messages that we tell them to
and their native tongue. And the Germans were like nine right.
The only word I could think of, uh holgan its
World War two rooms that would come years later. So, um,
(13:03):
it wasn't just Choctaw members of the Choctaw tribe who
were code talkers in World War One. Also the Comanche
played a role. Um the Fox which is also known
as the um oh Man I had it. Have you
ever heard the Fox tribe from I believe Mississippi I
(13:24):
don't think so you oh, you don't. Um. There was
also the Comanche. They played a big role in some
other tribes did as well. But there's like we're talking
a handful of people in the capacity, like you were saying,
it's like, uh, just say this in your native language
to this other guy who speaks your native language and
he'll tell you know, the guy on the other end
(13:45):
what you just said in English. Yeah. And here's the
rub I mean there. It is rich with irony throughout
this whole story. But here's the rub in World War
One is that Native Americans weren't even granted citizenship until
so the World War One code talkers were not even
American citizens yet they were doing this. Uh, and they
were not even recognized by the United States and acknowledged
(14:07):
and thanked until two thousand eight, right thousand eight, ten
years ago. France even recognized them in I think, did
you say that? Okay, So France recognized them first, and
it took another twenty years before the US recognized him officially. Unbelievable,
It is unbelievable. Um. But the the the problem with
(14:29):
World War One is it worked, but we became friendly
with Germany in between world War One and World War Two,
and Germany said, yeah, we're going to headge our bets here.
We're going to send some people to the United States
to learn Native American languages and culture so that if
we ever go to war with the United States again,
(14:51):
we'll have their number. And they did. Apparently there were
plenty of well, I don't know if plenty of the
right word, but there were Germans who spoke um, Cherokee, Comanche,
so that um, so much so that the some of
the American commanders in World War two were like, we
can't use Native American language because there's Germans who know
(15:12):
this already. They were compromised basically between World War One
and World War Two. You wanna take a break, Oh yes,
all right, let's take a break, and we're gonna come
back and talk about the dawn of World War two.
And a man named Philip Johnston. All right, so right
(15:49):
before World War two, UM, there was a training exercise
going on with UH, with soldiers from Michigan and Wisconsin.
There were Native American soldier is involved, and there was
a man UH and they were, you know, they were
testing out these coded transmissions. Are like, we didn't world
War one. Let's try it again. There was a man
there named Philip Johnston who was a white man, but
(16:11):
he actually grew up on a Navajo reservation. I think
he just read an article about this. Actually, Um, well, yeah,
he wasn't in the army at this time because they
brought him in like he was way too old, way
too old. But around this time I think he was
about fifty years old. Yeah, but he had the benefit
of growing up on a Navajo reservation. Considered himself a Navajo,
(16:33):
spoke the language following World War One and said, I
want to make a comeback, and I want to go
back and fight in World War two and start up
this crack team of Navajo code talkers. It was his idea.
And they said he went into the office of whatever
higher up general he needed to spoke some Navajo and
(16:53):
said this worked once, why can't it work twice? And
they was like, by George, I think you go onto something. Well,
they said, we'll give you, uh well of you a
chance to demonstrate this. So apparently in Los Angeles he
recruited four Navajo men who I guess he was friendly
with because, like you said, he considered himself Navaho. His
parents were missionaries. Um. And apparently he spoke Navajo so
(17:15):
well that at age nine, he served as the official
translator for a Navajo delegation that had gone to Washington,
d C. To lobby for better treatment and rights for
the Navajo nation. Which is amazing because, as you'll learn,
the not a lot of because there were other white
(17:35):
people who spoke Navajo that tried to be code talkers
and none of them made the cut. No, such a
hard language, right, So this guy must have just had
an ear for it too and was raised with it.
But um, he uh, he said, we I know you
guys are trying to make a code. I've got this language.
I've got these four guys from Los Angeles with me.
Just give him a shot. And so they gave him
(17:56):
a shot, I think Camp Elliott, and um, they gave two.
They took the two of the four Navajo guys, broke
them into pairs, put them in separate rooms, and said, here,
say this in Navajo, say this English phrase the Eagle
Lands at midnight. Will say, all right, that old bit,
and tell your buddies and see what they say. So
(18:18):
they transmitted the Eagle Lands at Midnight or whatever it was. Um,
over the phone in Navajo. The guys in the other
room took it in Navajo, translated it back into English
in like a minute. And the guys at Camp Elliot
were pretty impressed by this. They said, we're going to
bring in some German and Japanese people to listen. And
(18:39):
they're like, did you guys get that? I have no
idea what they said nine and whatever the Japanese word
is for now? Do you know that? Uh yet yet?
It's like that sounds a lot like Russians. The Japanese
word from now they say no so infrequent. I was
about to say, you know why you don't know that
because all you say is yes right when you go
over there, Yeah, sure, I'll take more more please, They
(19:02):
just bang my bowl on the table. So so yeah,
they they they actually didn't do that. I'm kidding, of course,
but they said this is great, and this is the
trick was not only was it um like basically impossible
to crack, but like you're saying, it was super fast,
way faster than machine codes, right, So that's a huge
(19:24):
advantage that this this offered, was you're using um Navajo
speakers to send a coded message. Prior to this In
an addition to this, you would you would use basically
machines that used algorithms to encode and decode a message,
and it could take hours hours. If you're trying to
(19:45):
send a desperate message on a frontline battle in the
Pacific theater, you don't have hours for that thing to
get across. So the idea that you could do the
same thing in minutes in a code that you were
just positive the Japanese would have no idea what to
do with that was a huge advantage for sure. Yeah,
And like the grabs are pointed out, it was taking
(20:07):
a long time with the code machines that the Germans
in Japanese were cracking anyway. So this was the solution.
There was like no no downside to it, alright. So,
like we said, Johnston was Philip Johnson was far too
old because he was a World War One veteran. Uh,
they gave him a special commission, said you're now a
(20:27):
staff sergeant and the Marines again or I don't know
if use of the marine or in the army initially,
do you know, I don't know, But at any rate,
he was in the Marines this time, and they said
you're gonna lead the Code Talker project go out and recruit,
So he went to reservations, recruited young men, and between
three and four hundred of these young men became UH
(20:51):
code talkers. He recruited more than that, but a lot
of them failed out for very various reasons, like you know,
they still have to go through boot camp and all
that stuff, so he still have to be a sold
or on top of it. Although it was a kind
of a truncated version of boot camp because they had
to get them in there quick. They needed them so badly.
They're like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're fine. Yeah, we
(21:11):
need to take you to code school basically. Yeah. But
the whole thing started with UM thirty. They originally recruited
thirty Navajo speakers. One of them dropped out, so there
were twenty nine original Navajo code talkers and they were
put to work initially creating the code. Because very importantly,
(21:32):
the Navajo code talkers not only spoke to one another
in Navajo, which was incomprehensible to basically anybody living it
listening to it who didn't speak it, UM, they would
also use a code. They would use code words in Navajo.
So what they created was a code within a code,
(21:54):
and it was as unbreakable as as any any codes
ever been come up that anyone's ever come up with.
I think we should you and I can't speak navajo. Uh,
I'm not, I'm I'm rusty. I think we should play
just a little bit of navajo, all right, and then
I'll translate lying Kai a kid joggi hanadia lago k
(22:23):
nazad leko a certain jolago nadia and yeah, opens is
so what you just heard in navajo was um. This
is from the parable of the prodigal son from the
movie Wind Talkers. What you just heard was not long
after that, the younger son got together all he had
(22:45):
set off for a distant country and they're squandered his
wealth in wild living, something everybody does from time to time.
But that was that was what you just heard in navajo. Um.
And it's it's so foreign sounding um for a reason,
like it's a really difficult language in that like the
(23:05):
same vowel can have four different types of intonation and
four different meanings. So one word can have four different
meanings based on the whether you know, you go up
or you speak through your nose or whatever. But you're
saying the same word, you're just intoning it differently, and
that just changes the meaning dramatically. That was one reason
(23:27):
why it was so impenetrable. Yeah, And like you said,
they they memorized five code words, three different versions of
the alphabet, and went to war. I mean I used
the word irony. I don't mean that's that's sort of
undersells it what was going on and why these men would,
(23:48):
um would sign up for something like this, and and
Ed points out like you can't get into the head
of them or explain every person's motivation because it was
all different. But um, through interviews, you know what what
sort of stood out was that they still even though
that the United States had stomped them down into near oblivion,
(24:09):
they still had a tie to that land and that
was their land. And regardless of what had gone on
in the past, Um, the Germans and the Japanese were
uh were invaders, that they were a threat to their
holy land. They were still a common enemy between the
United States and the Navajo. Yeah, I mean, it's just
(24:30):
just so much about their people that they could just
put all the other stuff aside, and the genocide and
the long walk and the trail of tears and say, well,
this this is still my land even though I'm on
a reservation, and I don't I want to help protect it. Amazing. Yes,
some of them were joined up because there, um, they
(24:51):
subscribed to the Navajo warrior culture, and the Navajo definitely
had their own warrior warrior culture, although that wasn't like
necessarily the central focus of their ulture. Others were like,
oh man, you're gonna get me off of this reservation
and I'm gonna go travel the world. I've never been
on a bus before. Let's go. Um. Someone were like,
I like this, g I Bill you're talking about. Um.
(25:12):
Others were drafted, didn't want to go, but they were
still drafted and they went. So they were just like
to to paint it any other way is to make it,
like to give it the wind talker treatment. That's not
the stuff you should know. Way, there were as many
different people. I think there were four hundred and twenty
one Navajo code talkers who ended up serving in World
(25:34):
War Two. I'm sure there were four hundred and twenty
one different reasons for why they went. That's just the
way it is there. They're people, Yeah, and we're talking
about people here dollar short day late. So let's talk
a little bit about this code within a code. Um
(25:55):
here here's one example. So troops moving forward to the
late is what the grab stirt came up with. And
they wouldn't just get on the horn with their Navajo
uh counterpart on the other end and say troops moving
forward to the lake in Navajo. They would substitute in
different words. Sometimes they would spell out some words one
(26:17):
letter at a time, with that letter being represented by
a word, like the first letter in the word that
they say. And it was the I mean, there were
there were rules for the code, but the person on
the other end, they were so in sync with one
another that they didn't necessarily look at a chart and say, well,
(26:38):
this is means this and this means this. They were
just able to converse rather organically within this code within
the code, right, and they all knew that that code
that was like this means this and this means this. Yeah.
But yeah, from from from the research, it seems like
they were able to shift and like you said, make
it organic on the fly, and they knew what one
(26:59):
another was saying kind of throughout the playbook a little bit,
I imagine in certain circumstances. Uh, and I'm sure the
American um, you know, the generals and the people in
charge were just like, just do it, man, just do
your thing, or they were like, I have no idea
what you just said. They had no idea. They threw
out the playbook a lot of times. They had to
(27:21):
do that because there weren't equivalents of certain words, like
they didn't have words for bombardment and and shell casing
and things like that, because they didn't have those things
in their culture, so they had to make up things
that they would be able to understand. Both ways, well,
they were also so there was an an alphabet, right,
so every three alphabets three Yes, that's right. So there
(27:43):
were three different words for every letter of the alphabet.
It's amazing, okay, UM, But there's something that is really
easy to look past that we really have to to think.
This is one of the reasons why this is so unbreakable.
If if you UM wanted to use the letter I,
well you would say the Navajo word for ice, okay,
(28:04):
But the Navajo word for ice doesn't have that It
doesn't begin with the letter I. They probably didn't have
a word for ice though, But that's funny people, well
know they The weird thing is is that they did
they did. Yes, they have ice. It was their most
closely related to a Native Alaskan tongue. Why they think
it's like evidence, it's linguistic evidence. They came across the
(28:25):
bearing land bridge. Um. So yeah, they also have a
word for shark, which is like, that doesn't make any
sense either if they they're they're from Arizona, basically in
New Mexico. That's what I thought. Yeah, they're like Chevy Chase, um.
But they but they have like a lot of They
have one for salmon, copperhead salmon, and that's you know
(28:47):
a lot of those in New Mexico. Yeah, it is delicious.
But the point is is the Navajo word um for
ice doesn't necessarily begin with ice. So even if you
knew Navajo, you wouldn't necessary really know that this is
the word for the letter I. And then to confound
it even more if there's three different words for the
letter I. Even if you're spelling like, um, well, what's
(29:12):
the word with multiple eyes? Hurry up and give me
one quick? Uh elicit Yes, okay, if you're spelling illicit
out you could use two different words for I, and
that cuts down on letter or in this case, code
word repetition, which is one of the easiest ways to
break a code. Look for repetitions and pair those up
(29:33):
with the letters that are used most frequently in English.
So if you're using three different code words for a
single letter, you can mix it up while you're spelling
it out, makes it even more impenetrable, Like this is
just such a gorgeous code. Yeah, they used um imagery
a lot of times, which is makes it kind of
(29:53):
strangely lyrical, like a um, a die bomber was a
chicken hawk, a submarine was an iron fish. Uh. And
then they also use you know, you heard a Cockney
rhyming slang um, which is she's. We could do a
podcast on that, but that'd be kind of cool. Um.
I won't even get into that. But it makes basically
(30:14):
make compound words in an English sound like a word
uh in the message. So um. The examples that the
grabster got was like the words secured. They would say.
The Navajo words for sheep cured or dispatch became dog
is patch in Navajo though, But so even if you
knew Navajo and you heard dog is patch. You wouldn't
(30:37):
know that that meant dispatch, right, And if you didn't
know Navajo, you wouldn't be able to hear and be like, oh,
that rhymes with dispatched. I'll bet that's what they said.
It doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard before in
your life. Yeah. And like you said, they would. They
were so familiar with it and comfortable with it that
they would switch it up on the fly. Uh. And
and you know, again, technically they had um they would
(31:00):
do something to alert the person that was like a
system in place to say like now we're going to
use this version, but they were they didn't even need
to do that really, right, That just seemed like a formality.
It sounds like, Yeah. And I think one of the
reasons why they were so able to shift like that, um,
because these these guys who were raised in the Indian schools,
(31:25):
they had to speak to one another Navajo like surreptitiously.
So they had to be able to shift on the fly,
not just between like um nuance and Navajo, which is
a very nuanced language to begin with, but also between
Navajo and English depending on who is coming their way. Um.
So there was a a I think it's my impression
(31:45):
that from their the treatment in Indian school, UM, it
would have made it easier for them to understand what
somebody was saying when they broke the rules of the
language really quickly. Yeah, they'd be able to follow. And then, Chuck,
there's one other thing that made this code even more beautiful.
It wasn't written down in There was no book, no document,
(32:10):
no text that you could get and teach yourself Navajo.
You couldn't get it. And like you said, even some
like white kids that were raised out on trading posts
and spoke Navaho their whole life, they washed out of
the code talker program. They had basically a success rate
non Navajo, UM had a success rate basically zero in
(32:31):
the code talker program for Navajo code. It was just
that hard and that nuanced. Amazing. Alright, let's take another break. Yeah,
I'm pretty I'm pretty jazzed up here. Yes, all right,
and we'll come back and talk about how this how
this really affected the war right after this alright, So,
(33:10):
like we said, at this point in the war, when
they were brought in uh, the Navajo code talkers, it
was the fighting in Europe was dwindling and the Pacific
Theater is where things were really happening. And so the
first action for the actual Navajo code talkers were at Guadalcanal.
And I hope we didn't paint a picture that they're
(33:31):
sitting in offices, talking to one another in an air
conditioned office on telephones and just sending orders to like
go bomb this place on Saturday. Uh. A lot of
times these men are on the front lines and relaying
um positions and uh, what's what it's like on the
ground and what's going on. It wasn't just directives to
go do this. Uh. They were relaying important information like
(33:54):
live in the moment on the front lines. And to
add to this, there was confusion a lot of times,
even among American soldiers. Like to an American soldier fifty
feet away, a Navajo code talker might look like a Japanese. Uh. Person,
were these like the very dumbest soldiers of all? I
(34:15):
don't know, man, I mean it's on record that there
was friendly fire because of this, So so they were
actually fired on. I saw that, like they had like
guns pointed at them at some point and would be
like marched over to be interrogated. It was such that
they felt like they needed to assign them personal guards,
which was freaking Nick Cage. And that's what that movie
was about, is that he was a white soldier assigned
(34:36):
to guard one of the Navajo cold code talkers because
they were being mistaken for Japanese soldiers, right, but he
was also secretly ordered to kill that code talkers then
let them fall into the hands of the Japanese. Yeah.
I wonder if that's a thing or if that was
wholly created for that movie. I don't know, like it's
a I don't know. I could see it go both ways. Yeah,
(34:59):
And I don't how smart the soldiers were, uh and
and confusing. I don't think, right, I don't think it
happened very often. And I think all it has to
happen is two or three times and all of a
sudden that's like part of the legend, you know. Um,
But it did happen, I mean, like it was. It
happened from time time. There was a guy named um,
I think George McCabe who was a Navajo code talker
(35:22):
who was taken prisoner by a fellow American UM because
he was standing in a chow line on the beach
at Guadalcanal, waiting to get food, and the guy was like,
you look Japanese. That's exactly what he did, pointed a
gun at him and said you're coming with me, and
I'm sure it was like, uh, sorry, but no, William McCabe,
(35:44):
I'm sorry, um, but that was that's Yeah. If you
look at a picture of a Navajo code talker, you
look at a picture of a Japanese person, I don't
see the resemblance. You should have been on the front lines,
my friend. I would have been like to dude, what
are you doing. Yeah. The language itself, and again this
(36:05):
is kind of funny because the language sounds nothing like Japanese,
but sometimes US radio operators would jam the frequency. I guess.
I mean the grabs are said because they mistook it
for Japanese. I imagine they just heard a foreign language
and just jammed it. Um. I don't know if they
necessarily thought it sounded like Japanese sounds sure, Yeah, maybe
(36:27):
they had no idea what Japanese or Navajo even sounded like,
and was just like it ain't English. Maybe they were
under orders for like, yeah, if it's not an English jam, yeah,
possibly could see that. So these like we said the
speed was one of the real keys, and just how
quickly they could get these messages delivered. Uh, and it
allowed them to UH. Here's a great here's a great
(36:49):
quote from Philip Johnson, who started the program. He said,
during the first forty eight hours and UH visit Eo Jima.
He said, while we were landing in consolid our short positions,
I had six Navajo radio nets operating around the clock.
And that period alone, they sent and received more than
eight hundred messages without an error in forty eight hours.
(37:10):
Eight hundred messages, no mistakes, no mistakes. That's amazing. And
they're relaying these messages again in minutes and each of
them would have taken hours to decode without the Navajo
code talkers. There was another quote from a guy named
Major Howard Conner who was on Iwo Jima as well
in the Signal Corps, and he said, paraphrasing here that
(37:31):
the Marines would not have taken Ewo Jima had it
not been for the Navajo code talkers. The entire operation
Yvo GiMA, you know, the very famous like flag raising statue,
Zevo GiMA um basically a turning point in the Pacific
that the entire operation was done in Navajo. That was
(37:52):
what was spoken over the radios for the entire operation.
It's amazing there really is. I mean, like if you
think about how many American lives were saved by that,
that's I mean, it was just such a direct contribution
to the war. Yeah, um, he would GiMA. That was huge. Yeah,
I mean that's all you can say. Yeah, this this
deserves its own movie treatment, like sort of like hidden figures,
(38:13):
like these minority voices who really had this huge impact
that never got their due. And you know with the
Navajo code talkers, they came back to the after the
war and um it was classified what went on until nine.
Apparently they may have uh done this in Vietnam and career,
(38:34):
although I don't think anyone has totally knows that for sure. Yeah,
but they did not. You would think like, oh, and
after nineteen sixty eight they were just put on a
pedestal and praised um all throughout the United States. That
is not true. They were basically sent back to the
reservations with what awaited them there, which was poverty and
(38:54):
hardship and alcoholism and disenfranchisement and um some I mean
some of them we're we're lucky enough to boot strap
up from military mansion. I think ones that stayed in
the military afterward made a career out of it tended
to do better than ones that you know, went back
right after the war. Some of them were able to
(39:16):
get into college. Um. Some of them tried to buy
houses on the reservation through the g I Bill, which
was very much their right as veterans after World War two. Um,
But through a fluke of the treaties that put them
on the reservation, they don't they didn't actually own the land.
(39:37):
The land that they owned was held in trust, so
they couldn't show the bank actually own this land or
the guy am trying to buy this land from owns
the land. So the g I Bill was useless for
a lot of them, which is a big black eye
on it was just basically par for the course for
how most of them were treated afterward. Um, I mean,
(40:00):
just right back on the reservation. It was just the
usual reservation life again. Nineteen sixty nine, there was a
reunion at the fourth Marine Division. In seventy one, Nixon
awarded them a certificate of thanks yea and a light
punch in the arm. An old tricky Dick. Uh. In
two August fourteenth was declared National Code Talker Day. That
(40:22):
was for all code talkers. Yeah, not just Navajo code talkers,
but those original twenty nine. We're given a Congressional Gold
medal in two thousand and uh. In two thousand fourteen,
on June four the final original code talker, Navajo code
talker Chester Nez, passed away. And uh, just look at
the picture of Chester Nez in Easy, just that sweet
(40:46):
face and he's got the veteran's hat on that says
Navajo code talker on it. I love those hats. Pretty amazing. Um.
The the uh, the awards ceremony, so they were awarded
the Congressional Medal of Honor and two thousand the original
twenty nine. But when they actually presented the award in
two thousand one, by that time there are only four
(41:07):
of them left alive. And that's a big criticism too,
Um that it was like, you could probably done this
a little a little sooner while they were alive. Still,
it might have taken sixty something years to just sort
of get that ceremony in order right. They wanted to
get everything just right. But that was amazing, And yeah,
(41:30):
hopefully somebody will make a movie about it that's not
mostly about Nick Cage's character the White Guy. Uh. If
you want to know more about code talkers, you can
search them on the internet and there's some fascinating stuff
out there. Oh and Chuck, if you want to know
more about Navajo code talkers and you happened to ever
be in Kyenta, Arizona, there's a burger king there and
(41:54):
it has basically a Navajo code talker museum. It's basically
just a case, but it counts. It qualifies as a
mini museum. Sure, grab a whopper learned something. Yeah, and
since I said that, it's time for a listener Mayo,
I'm gonna call this easy Bake oven follow up um
(42:14):
from Oregon. So guys just listen to easy Bake ovens Um.
I've always been a big believer in kids playing with
whatever toys they want, and as a kid, I spent
a great deal of time playing in the dirt with
my brothers, making roads and parking lots for our hot wheels.
Flash forward twenty years my son wanted me to take
him to the toy store to spend some six birthday money.
(42:35):
Sixth birthday money, I followed him as he perused the
remote control cars various action figures, and he disappeared around
the corner, and before I could get to the other
alda find him, he came tromping back holding an easy
bake oven. He asked me if he had enough money
to buy it, and he did, Uh, this about twenty
bucks as he As we walked to the counter, I
(42:55):
asked him if he wanted me to carry it for
him put it in a cart, because the box was
about as big as he was, and he insisted on
carrying it himself. Although I've always encouraged him to play
with what he wants, I was surprised that he wanted
to carry it himself. His dad was not always so
open minded voice playing with what he called girl toys,
and probably still isn't Uh. We are no longer together,
(43:16):
needless to say. Anyway, we pay for the oven and
my son carries it to the car. He won't let
me put it in the trunk or even in the
seat next to him. He held it on his lap
the whole way home. The stories just adorbs in every way.
While we were driving, he examined the box and made
a harrump sound asked him what was wrong, and he said, uh,
that he was mad. And asked him why. He said,
(43:38):
the boxes pink and there's only a girl on it,
but boys like to cook to Mom told him I agree.
Uh so I guess you could say he has always
been woke. Uh. He made many treats with his oven
over the years. And I even have a photo of
him somewhere wearing his Grandma's frillly cooking apron with a
big smile on his face. And that is from Davina H.
M Berry in Portland, Oregon. Another Emburry Is there another one? Yeah? Really? Yeah.
(44:03):
We never really figured out how to say that last name,
but there was like within the last month or two
there was an m Burry. Weird. I wonder if it
was her, thanks a lot to Vina. Yeah, maybe maybe
it was. I think the other one was with the
E that's with an eye. Huh. Yeah. I will figure
it out one day. Uh. If you want to, if
you're an Emberry or an Embury or whatever, you want
(44:26):
to get in touch with us, you can join us
on social Just go do stuff you should know dot
com and find all the links there or send us
all an email. The stuff podcast at how stuff works
dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
is it how stuff works dot com.
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