WW2: What's the secret language that helped win the war?

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The search for an unbreakable code

In 1942, with the world at war, the race was on to find a code that the enemy couldn’t crack. Securely transferring information at high speed meant the difference between victory and defeat.

The US Marines thought they had the answer in a Native American language. They turned to the Navajo tribe for recruits. Their mission was to devise a code rooted in the Navajo language that would be impossible for outsiders to decipher.

CLICKABLE: Words as weapons

Navajo had no words to describe modern warfare. Instead the Code Talkers took inspiration from familiar sights from the Navajo reservation back home. Can you crack the code?

Code Talkers in combat

Follow the story of the Code Talkers from recruitment to operations in the Pacific.

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1/7: In spring 1942, recruitment of Navajo speakers by the US Marines began. Carl Gorman was amongst this initial group of 29 who signed up. They were assigned with establishing the code and proving it could work.
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2/7: They embarked on military training followed by communications training. They successfully devised and tested the code, committing 200 code words to memory (this later expanded to 750 words). Carl Gorman is back row, five from right.
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3/7: The first group of Code Talkers was dispatched to the Pacific. Two of the group remained in the US to recruit and train other Navajo. Over the course of the war, around 400 Navajo Code Talkers were trained and deployed.
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4/7: Once out in the Pacific, the Code Talkers were involved in battles between 1942 and 1945, including Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Peleliu and Tarawa. This image shows Carl Gorman on the island of Saipan.
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5/7: Code Talking was immensely successful, giving the US Marines the upper hand in co-ordinating combat operations. Navajo Code Talker networks were used at Iwo Jima to send 800 messages. They did so without a single error.
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6/7: Major Howard Connor, in charge of the battlefield communications, declared, “were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”
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7/7: The Japanese had cracked other codes used by US Army, Navy and Air Corps but remained baffled by the Navajo language. They never cracked the code used by the Marines.

Hidden from history

When the war ended, the Code Talkers returned home to their families in southwest America. However they were unable able to reveal anything about their vital contribution to the war. The US Marine Corps insisted that the mission remained top secret for the next 20 years.

In 1968 the mission was finally declassified and the secret was out. But full public recognition of the Code Talkers’ achievements took another 14 years. President Reagan declared 14 August 1982 to be National Navajo Code Talkers Day. Later, in 2000, a bill was introduced to Congress formally remembering the men. By 2001 President George W. Bush presented Gold Congressional Medals to the original 29 Code Talkers. But only five members were still alive to collect their award in person.

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National Navajo Code Talkers Day rewarded the men, 37 years after Iwo Jima. Clip from 91�ȱ� News, 14 August 1982.

91�ȱ�

The search for an unbreakable code

CLICKABLE: Words as weapons

Code Talkers in combat

Hidden from history

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