Navajo Code Talkers Research Paper

The Navajo code talkers are one of the main reasons why the United States conquered Japan and Germany in World War II. During World War II , both Germany and Japan thought they had such unbreakable codes, but infact, these codes were broken and their most vital information was released to the enemy. A variety of techniques were used to meet the goal that the code talkers pursued and overall, code and code breaking during World War II changed the outcome of the war, and helped led the United States to victory. Code talkers had complex ways to send and receive messages. When received a message by radio or telephone, all that could be heard was a fragment of Navajo words. The Code Talkers would then translate those words into English. In some cases the first letter of each word would stand for that particular letter of the English alphabet. As anyone can clearly see, this code was very complicated and all code talkers had to go through much training to be able to do this. There were many different requirements to be a code talker. Once in training , the Navajos …show more content…
In 1942, the first 29 Indian recruits attended boot camp. Then, at the camp in Pendleton, Oceanside, California, the group created the code. Which was basically a dictionary full of basic military terms translated into navajo. All the code words, aswell as the dictionary, had to be memorized during training. “All of the 29 Marines that I went in with, we got together and made a code in our own language. There were over 400 or 500 words that we made up at that time. We memorized them and everything was up here,” (Chester Nez), former Navajo code talker. The Armed Services ran training courses to instruct Indians in communications techniques and to develop standard military phraseology and common military terms. Using the Navajo language seemed to be the perfect option because it wasn't written and not many people of origin could speak