newsguygeorge wrote:
I met several during my stint as a reporter with the newspaper in Farmington, N.M. I think the last of them on the Navajo Reservation passed a couple of years ago. I have since learned that the Navajo were the first of the code talkers, but later the Cherokee and others joined in the effort. We owe those veterans a great debt. The code was never cracked, by the way.
I read an account of a few Navaho service members captured by the Japanese and tortured to get them to reveal the code. The Japanese finally gave up when they realized those radio operators were not just speaking Navaho but it really was in "code" so just any Navaho could only tell you the words, not what they meant.
In World War I the 42nd Infantry - a National Guard division formed in New York had a lot guys from China Town in NYC and used them to send orders via telephone line and radio. The Germans had to scramble to find not only Chinese speakers but some who spoke the correct dialects and then they were talking in a simple code in case the Germans were listening or had tapped the phone lines running along the trench lines.
Being a nation of many cultures etc. and a lot immigrants and Native Americans speaking many languages can come in very handy at times.