Native Languages in Military History

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Freddie Goldtooth
  • 17th Logistics Readiness Squadron
GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas - --  A band of warriors answered their Nation's call. They drew upon their proud warrior tradition, supplying themselves and the military with unbreakable codes from ancient languages that changed the world as we know it. They were known as Code Talkers.

Native language was found to be an effective military weapon during World War I when Cherokee troops utilized their language to transmit messages under fire. This tactic was so successful, about a month later Choctaw Natives became America's original Code Talkers. Flux created by both World Wars, lead to international conflicts where the need for Native American Code Talkers arose.

In September 1918, the American 30th Infantry Division used the Cherokee language to transmit messages during the Second Battle of the Somme while serving under the British Army. The use of Cherokee is the first known use of Native Americans in the U.S. military, but was not as notable as the Choctaw Code Talkers.

By October 1918, the Americans had to change their communication strategy because the Germans were able to decipher their encrypted messages. This became the basis for secret communication as Germans had no reference to translate the Native language.

Their first encoded messages helped support this decision because in that same month, Choctaw Code Talkers successfully ordered a withdrawal of two companies from Chufilly to Chardoney, France during the night. Within those 24 hours of deployed code use, battles were immediately turned in America's favor during the Meuse-Argonne Campaign because Germans were forced to digress to counter attacks against American troops.

A German officer admitted that his intelligence troops, "Were completely confused by the Indian language and gained no benefit whatsoever from their wiretaps."

In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and U.S. Allies were in full attack. This helped expedite the end of WWI, but only two decades later WWII would occur.

Before the outbreak of World War II, Adolf Hitler knew of the successful code use and compiled a team of anthropologists to learn Native American languages. The efforts to learn the languages were greatly complicated by hundreds of language dialects and pronunciations. The attempts failed and Meskwaki, Comanche, Basque and Navajo language were then utilized successfully in WWII.

In May 1942, the use for Basque language was cautiously considered after Capt. Frank D. Carranza met with over 50 U.S. Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp. More to his surprise, thirty five Basque Jesuits reside in Hiroshima and in China and the Philippines, there was a colony of Basque jai alai players. Furthermore, there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia. With this information, American Basque Code Talkers were kept from these countries but until Aug. 1, 1942, a Basque-coded message sent from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz warned him of an upcoming Operation, Code "Apple." This operation was to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands. The Basque Code Talkers also encrypted and translated the start date to be Aug. 7, the attack date on the Guadalcanal. There was a shortage of Basque speakers as the war extended over the Pacific, so the Comanche and Navajo Code Talker program came to be preferred.

In June of 1944, fourteen Comanche Code Talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy with two Comanche code-talkers assigned to each regiment under Signal companies, the rest assigned to the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division. The Comanches started transmitting messages shortly after landing on Utah Beach. While none were killed, some were wounded.

In combat, phonetically spelling out messages would be time consuming and rather dangerous. So terms, concepts, tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given descriptive words since native language did not warrant a verbatim translation. The end results were gratifying as it produced extraordinary results to the war effort and created patriotism within the Native Americans to a country who would remember them as heroes.

Communication can be an effective weapon to defeat your enemy, or it can destroy you.