The real Navajo code talkers: World War II's secret heroes created a code that proved unbreakable. Now they're movie stars.

• Author: Price, Sean
• Position: Times past

Early in World War II, an American Marine radio operator in the jungles of Guadalcanal heard over his headset what sounded like gibberish. At first, he thought it was the Japanese, whose forces were fighting for control of the South Pacific island. But soon he discovered that the chatter came from his own troops. "What's going on over there?" he radioed. "You guys drunk?"

Not at all. The Marine Corps actually had a top-secret experiment in the works. Specially trained soldiers from the Navajo tribe were sending coded messages back and forth in their own language. Before long, Navajo "code talkers" were relaying vital battlefield information faster than any code machines. And they could do it in a way that baffled the Japanese code breakers.

It was one of the most ingenious moves in military history. The movie Windtalkers, out in June, dramatizes the Navajo soldiers' mission. From May 1942 to the war's end in August 1945, more than 400 code talkers served in some of the Pacific's bloodiest battles. They were key in the Allied victory against Japan, but their contribution was a military secret for decades.

CREATING THE CODE

The idea for the code talkers began with Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary, who grew up on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and spoke the language fluently. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Johnston had a flash of inspiration:

Their language might offer a solution for the oldest problem in military operations--sending a message that no enemy could understand.

Unlike English, the unwritten Navajo language is tonal. Just a slight change in the pitch of one vowel can completely alter a word's meaning. That makes their words almost impossible for most people to pronounce correctly. In 1942, only about 30 outsiders spoke the language fluently.

In May 1942, the Marines secretly recruited 29 young Navajo men and had them create a military code (see "Language Barrier," left). The men turned to nature for many code words. "Dive bomber" became "chicken hawk," and "tank" became "tortoise." Code talkers could also spell out unusual words. For the English letter "A," they might use "ant," which in Navajo is "wol-la-chee."

An order that read "Company E, move 50 yards, left flank of Company D" could be translated into code as: "Mexican ear, mouse victor elk 50 yards, left flank ocean fish Mexican deer." Spoken in Navajo, these words were incomprehensible to speakers of English or Japanese. One U.S. soldier said...