GI JOE

In the early part of the 1940's, the Allied forces of World War II were faced with a grim situation in the Pacific. The Japanese Imperial forces were advancing in that region, capturing island after island. It became critical that the Japanese progression was stopped before the entire Pacific theater would fall under Axis control. But stopping the Japanese assault would prove to be a difficult task. The network of scattered islands which made up the Pacific theater stretched across thousands of miles of ocean, creating perhaps the most isolated and treacherous battlefields of the war. If the Allies were to persevere under such arduous conditions, communications would be a key factor. The Japanese, however, were excellent code breakers, and proved able to anticipate every move the Allies made. To regain control of the Pacific islands, an "unbreakable" code would have to be developed. The answer would come from a Native American language and became so immediately effective that it was dubbed "the Navajo Weapon".

The use of Native American languages as code was not an entirely new idea. The Choctaw tongue had already been used as code during World War I, increasing the chances that Navajo would fit the military's criteria very well. Navajo is a spoken language, with no written forms existing (hence, it had to be inscribed phonetically for code use) and up until the war, had been used only on the Navajo lands of the American southwest. The complexity and sophistication of the tongue itself, then coded for military use, actualized a perfectly unbreakable code - impossible for non-speakers to learn or understand. On February 28, 1942, two Navajos successfully encoded, transmitted and decoded messages in about 20 seconds - more than 29 minutes faster than the encryption machines in use at the time. The project was given the go-ahead, and with the approval of the Navajo Tribal Council, the recruitment of Navajo men for the war effort began.

The first trial of the code occurred at Guadalcanal in 1942. It was so successful that the military recommended further deployment of Marine "Code Talkers" (as they came to be known) in all divisions. The Marine Brass quickly acted on that advice, and by the war's end, there were approximately 400 active Navajo code talkers in the Pacific campaign. The code talkers were instrumental in practically every Marine action in the Pacific - from Guadalcanal to Okinawa in 1945.

The Navajo code retained its usefulness even after the war came to an end. For that reason, the code talkers were discharged without fanfare, and were told to keep knowledge of the code a secret. In 1969, the code talkers were first officially recognized for their efforts. They received the Certificate of Appreciation from the President of the United States in 1971, and since then more dedications and monuments have been raised to honor them. Their contribution to the war effort in the Pacific theater was essential to Allied victory. Their achievement is a feat unrivaled - it remains to this day the only unbroken code ever used in the history of war.