The United States looked around for a code that they could use during World War II, to avoid being overheard or having intelligence from the Axis enemies gained by communications between different units and Allied Groups. One of the methods for communications that was used was Navajo Code Talkers. There were hundreds of Native Marine Corps Navajo Code Talkers that were enlisted and assigned to different U.S. Marine Corps units.
The Son of a Missionary, Phillip Johnson approached the U.S. Marine Corps in the months after Pearl Harbor and suggested that they used Native American Navajo Code Talkers to prevent others from listening in on communications. Johnson took four Navajos from Los Angeles shipyards and demonstrated how the Navajo language could be used to keep military communications private. He demonstrated the ability to a group of Marine Officers, at Camp Elliot in San Diego. One of the officers in attendance was General Clayton Vogel, who was the Commanding Officer of the Pacific Amphibious fleet. General Vogel was very pleased with the demonstration and ordered the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps to recruit 220 Navajo Code Talkers, but in the end General Vogel had to settle for a 30 Navajos for a pilot program.
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The original Navajo code talkers were put through U.S. Marine Corps basic training and assigned to command and field units across the Pacific Theater. A codebook was slowly established, and code words used to refer to personnel and equipment. Navajo U.S. Marine Code Talkers saw action across the Pacific Theater; they were used in the Battle Of Guadalcanal, the Battle for Iwo Jima. Three U.S. Marine Navajo Code Talkers were retained in the United States to train other code talkers, and 29 were issued orders and assigned to commands.
There was one Navajo Sergeant in the United States Army that was captured in the Philippines in 1942, and he was ordered by the Japanese to try and break the code. He could understand the Navajo language, but the words that he related did not make any sense. The U.S. Marines had made a code within a code, which prevented it from ever being broken. The Navajo code was never broken by the Japanese military.
High ranking Japanese Imperial Navy and Army officers have testified that without the use of the Navajo code talkers, that there would have been no secrecy and that the Battle for Iwo Jima would never have been won by the U.S. Marines like it was.
