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Article published Sep
15, 2006
Lecture honors
war code talkers
By Hattie
Bernstein
Telegraph Staff
NASHUA – During World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps recruited 29 Navajo
men to develop a code that would outsmart the enemy in the Pacific.
The code, based on the Navajo language, initially contained more than
200 terms. But by the end of the war, it had grown to more than 600
terms, military words including the names of ships, planes, ranks of
officers and divisions and general vocabulary and the English alphabet.
“It was a language that the Japanese didn’t understand, and they took it
a step further, coding the Navajo language so that even a Navajo speaker
couldn’t understand. It was jibberish,” said historian Zonnie Gorman,
daughter of the late Carl Gorman, one the code talkers.
The code talker’s daughter is speaking at Daniel Webster College on
Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture is open to the public.Gorman, who
lives in Gallup, N.M., said she grew up listening to her parents talk
about the code talkers and accompanied them to reunions and meetings.
She eventually became so enthralled by the stories, she earned a degree
in history and is writing a book about the men, a group she describes as
American heroes.
Gorman isn’t the only one to value the code talkers’ contributions. Five
years ago, the World War II code talkers were honored, many of them
posthumously, with a Congressional medal, the highest honor bestowed on
any civilian by Congress, usually to an individual. The code talkers
were the second group to receive the award, which was previously
bestowed on the members of the expedition to the Antarctic led by
Admiral Byrd in 1939.
What distinguishes the code talkers from other American heroes, Gorman
said, is their poignant history. The men of her father’s generation were
forced to leave their remote and primitive Indian reservation as boys to
attend boarding schools where they were punished verbally and physically
for speaking the Navajo language.
“They were raised under assimilation policy, beaten for speaking their
language,” Gorman said. “My dad was chained in the basement for speaking
Navajo.”
But in spite of their experiences, 29 code talkers willingly volunteered
to serve their country during the war.
Gorman said the Navajo code is the only code used by the U.S. during
wartime that was never broken. The code, used during the Korean and
Vietnam wars, was declassified in 1968 when Gorman was 5.
The code talker’s daughter said a turning point in her life was meeting
the U.S. Marines Corps recruiter who recruited her father and the other
men.
She was preparing to become a teacher, but decided to switch from
education to history. She made a documentary about the code talkers as
part of a college project and has since followed in her father’s
footsteps, giving lectures about the wartime heroes, including details
about racism and paternalism that for generations have characterized
relations between the Navajos and the U.S. government.
“In war, you don’t want the other side to know your plans, you don’t
want them to know the code, so messages can be sent without them
knowing,” Gorman said, noting that the form of a code varies whether it
be voice, tapping or flags.
“In 1942, there were no computers. Navajo was a language that the
Japanese didn’t understand,” she said.
When she lectures, Gorman draws attention to the irony of the code
talkers’ story, detailing heroism that rises above injustice and
suffering.
The code talkers refusal to abandon their language and heritage as
children later helped their country win the war, she points out.
“What I see happening now among the Indian people is directly related to
our history,” Gorman continued. “Now, under the policies of the U.S.
government, under the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, we’re still semi-dependent on the U.S.”
But the story of the code talkers pays tribute to not only the
patriotism and talents of a group of Navajo men during World War II, but
also to human persistence and resilience.
“They are heroes to Native American people for what they went through
and what they turned around and did for the U.S. government,” Gorman
said. “They were able to rise above the social and economic conditions
and injustices, and because of them, we’ve renewed our interest and
pride in our language and culture.” |
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