Veterans of the Battle of Peleliu, these Marines were Navajo and Comanche code talkers.

(Source: history.navy.mil)

July 28, 2011, 5:01pm / 31

PFC Preseton Toledo and PFC Frank Toledo of the USMC were cousins attached to a Marine Artillery Regiment somewhere in the South Pacific as Navajo Code Talkers. They relayed orders over field radios using their native tongue, a code which the Japanese never broke throughout the duration of the war.

July 28, 2011, 2:00pm / 22

Navajo code talker

March 29, 2011, 5:20pm / 37

German soldiers during World War I had been befuddled by Indians who transmitted messages over field phones in the Choctaw language. The 32d Infantry Division, Third Army, used Indians from Michigan and Wisconsin to work with microphones and to transmit messages in the Louisiana Maneuvers of 1940. During World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps recruited Navajo Indians for the same purpose. Navajo marines used their language as a battlefield code that the Japanese never broke. The Navajo Code Talkers became the most celebrated and publicized of the radio units.

Marines were “elite” fighters and welcomed Indians because of their warrior reputation. The Navajo marines ended their ceremonial chants by singing the Marine Corps Hymn in Navajo. Their eloquence came naturally to Indians because theirs is an oral culture. Navajos formed special all-Navajo Marine Corps signal units that encoded messages in their native tongue. Taking advantage of the flexibility and range of the Navajo language, they worked out translations of military and naval terms so that orders and instructions could be transmitted by voice over the radio in a code the Japanese were never able to break. They were used first in late 1942 on Guadalcanal. Special Code Talker units were eventually assigned to each of the Marine Corps’ six Pacific divisions.

By war’s end, over 400 Navajo had served as Code Talkers and because of this, an untold numbers of Marines owe their lives to them.

February 13, 2011, 12:00pm / 51