Post by Okwes on Dec 28, 2007 12:33:16 GMT -5
WWII Navajo code talkers welcome recognition
By Tim Gaynor
Fri Jun 15, 7:25 AM ET
WINDOW ROCK, Arizona (Reuters) - Before Keith Little went off to
war, speaking Navajo had only ever got him into trouble at school.
By the time he came home in 1945, it had proved decisive in winning
the brutal campaign for the Pacific and earned him a niche in
history.
Navajo code talkers have already been the subject of a Hollywood
film and received congressional medals for their wartime service.
Now, surviving members of the crack communications team are to be
featured on a postage stamp, and the Arizona state legislature plans
a memorial to them outside the state capitol in Phoenix.
"Recognition has been a long time in coming, so it is welcome," said
Keith Little, 83, who is president of the Navajo Code Talkers
Association.
Like several of the other code talkers, celebrated in the 2002
film "Windtalkers," Little spent a childhood herding sheep on the
broad juniper and sage covered steppe of the reservation.
When the United States was pitched in to the war by the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, veterans say many Navajo
on the reservation took it personally and rushed to join the armed
forces.
"We wanted to get even," said Samuel Smith, 82, who went to war aged
17. "It was my intention to defend my little piece of land that I
was herding sheep on."
WALKING CODE
Smith joined the U.S. Marine Corps with dreams of becoming a pilot.
His commanding officers, who were singling out bilingual Navajos for
a secret unit, had other plans.
"When they found out I was Navajo, I had no choice. I packed my sea
bag and went to Camp Pendleton (California)," Smith said.
The Marines called them Communications Specialists. They were taught
Morse code, semaphore and "blinker" -- a system using lights to
communicate with other ships.
Navajo who were not truly bilingual were soon shipped out to other
units, and the remainder began training in a unique code that
substituted Navajo words for military terms.
In the code, the native word for "turtle,' CHAY-DA-GAHI, came to
mean a tank; a "chicken hawk," or GINI, became a dive bomber, while
America simply became, NE-HE-MAH, "our mother."
Their job would be to transmit vital battlefield information
including tactics, troop movements and orders using field telephones
and radios throughout the Pacific War.
It was regarded as secure from Japanese code breakers as the
consonant-rich language was only spoken in the U.S. Southwest, was
known by fewer than 30 non-Navajo people, and had no written form.
"We had to store the code up here," Little said, tapping his
temple. "All of us became, in essence, a walking code."
"SEND A TANK"
The code talkers served in all six Marine divisions and took part in
every assault carried out in the Pacific Theater, one of the
toughest of the war.
Little recalls scrambling down a cargo net with his radio pack and
rifle, leaping into a landing craft in the roiling ocean off the
Marshall Islands in early 1944. Later he landed under fire on the
beach head, sprinting for cover.
The Navajos sent and received messages as war planes raced overhead,
artillery pounded and troops fought with fixed bayonets.
"You didn't know if you would live through it or not," veteran Jimmy
Begay, 85, said of the bloody and relentless campaign.
One message he took from a Marine unit pinned down in the Solomon
Islands read simply: "Send a tank with a flame thrower."
The Navajos' reputation grew as island after island fell, and was
sealed at Iwo Jima, which the Marine Corps took back in a 35-day
battle in which nearly 20,000 Japanese and 7,000 Americans died.
There, six Navajo code talkers worked around the clock, sending and
receiving more than 800 vital messages without error in the first
two days of the battle alone.
"Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines world never have taken Iwo
Jima," Maj. Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division's signal officer,
said after the war.
REMEMBERING THE PAST
Thirteen Code Talkers died in the war. Now, more than six decades
later, fewer than half of the original 420 men are still alive. The
veterans differ on how they would like to be remembered.
For Smith, who went to war as a fiery youngster filled with tales of
the forced relocation of Navajos in 1864 and skirmishes with
neighboring tribes, the only tribute that mattered came from his
grandfather.
"When I came back he told me 'grandson ... you're a man now, you're
a warrior' ... and I appreciated that above all the medals," he told
Reuters.
Begay's grandfather was a medicine man who held a ceremony to
cleanse him of combat when he came home from the war and urged him
to leave his harrowing experiences on the battlefield.
"He told me not to talk about it, or think about it or anything. 'If
you do, you'll go crazy,"' Begay recalled.
Little, as president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, takes a
special responsibility for safeguarding the memory of the veterans
for posterity, and says the planned tributes are fitting.
"This was no ordinary contribution to America," he told Reuters as
he stood shoulder to shoulder with his former comrades at arms.
"The Navajo Code Talkers did something unique, incredible ... and it
should be observed."
By Tim Gaynor
Fri Jun 15, 7:25 AM ET
WINDOW ROCK, Arizona (Reuters) - Before Keith Little went off to
war, speaking Navajo had only ever got him into trouble at school.
By the time he came home in 1945, it had proved decisive in winning
the brutal campaign for the Pacific and earned him a niche in
history.
Navajo code talkers have already been the subject of a Hollywood
film and received congressional medals for their wartime service.
Now, surviving members of the crack communications team are to be
featured on a postage stamp, and the Arizona state legislature plans
a memorial to them outside the state capitol in Phoenix.
"Recognition has been a long time in coming, so it is welcome," said
Keith Little, 83, who is president of the Navajo Code Talkers
Association.
Like several of the other code talkers, celebrated in the 2002
film "Windtalkers," Little spent a childhood herding sheep on the
broad juniper and sage covered steppe of the reservation.
When the United States was pitched in to the war by the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, veterans say many Navajo
on the reservation took it personally and rushed to join the armed
forces.
"We wanted to get even," said Samuel Smith, 82, who went to war aged
17. "It was my intention to defend my little piece of land that I
was herding sheep on."
WALKING CODE
Smith joined the U.S. Marine Corps with dreams of becoming a pilot.
His commanding officers, who were singling out bilingual Navajos for
a secret unit, had other plans.
"When they found out I was Navajo, I had no choice. I packed my sea
bag and went to Camp Pendleton (California)," Smith said.
The Marines called them Communications Specialists. They were taught
Morse code, semaphore and "blinker" -- a system using lights to
communicate with other ships.
Navajo who were not truly bilingual were soon shipped out to other
units, and the remainder began training in a unique code that
substituted Navajo words for military terms.
In the code, the native word for "turtle,' CHAY-DA-GAHI, came to
mean a tank; a "chicken hawk," or GINI, became a dive bomber, while
America simply became, NE-HE-MAH, "our mother."
Their job would be to transmit vital battlefield information
including tactics, troop movements and orders using field telephones
and radios throughout the Pacific War.
It was regarded as secure from Japanese code breakers as the
consonant-rich language was only spoken in the U.S. Southwest, was
known by fewer than 30 non-Navajo people, and had no written form.
"We had to store the code up here," Little said, tapping his
temple. "All of us became, in essence, a walking code."
"SEND A TANK"
The code talkers served in all six Marine divisions and took part in
every assault carried out in the Pacific Theater, one of the
toughest of the war.
Little recalls scrambling down a cargo net with his radio pack and
rifle, leaping into a landing craft in the roiling ocean off the
Marshall Islands in early 1944. Later he landed under fire on the
beach head, sprinting for cover.
The Navajos sent and received messages as war planes raced overhead,
artillery pounded and troops fought with fixed bayonets.
"You didn't know if you would live through it or not," veteran Jimmy
Begay, 85, said of the bloody and relentless campaign.
One message he took from a Marine unit pinned down in the Solomon
Islands read simply: "Send a tank with a flame thrower."
The Navajos' reputation grew as island after island fell, and was
sealed at Iwo Jima, which the Marine Corps took back in a 35-day
battle in which nearly 20,000 Japanese and 7,000 Americans died.
There, six Navajo code talkers worked around the clock, sending and
receiving more than 800 vital messages without error in the first
two days of the battle alone.
"Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines world never have taken Iwo
Jima," Maj. Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division's signal officer,
said after the war.
REMEMBERING THE PAST
Thirteen Code Talkers died in the war. Now, more than six decades
later, fewer than half of the original 420 men are still alive. The
veterans differ on how they would like to be remembered.
For Smith, who went to war as a fiery youngster filled with tales of
the forced relocation of Navajos in 1864 and skirmishes with
neighboring tribes, the only tribute that mattered came from his
grandfather.
"When I came back he told me 'grandson ... you're a man now, you're
a warrior' ... and I appreciated that above all the medals," he told
Reuters.
Begay's grandfather was a medicine man who held a ceremony to
cleanse him of combat when he came home from the war and urged him
to leave his harrowing experiences on the battlefield.
"He told me not to talk about it, or think about it or anything. 'If
you do, you'll go crazy,"' Begay recalled.
Little, as president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, takes a
special responsibility for safeguarding the memory of the veterans
for posterity, and says the planned tributes are fitting.
"This was no ordinary contribution to America," he told Reuters as
he stood shoulder to shoulder with his former comrades at arms.
"The Navajo Code Talkers did something unique, incredible ... and it
should be observed."