Navajo code

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Navajo Code Talkers on Saipan in June 1944 , (from left) Oscar B. Gallup, Chester Nez, Carl Gorman
Code Talkers Monument Ocala , Florida USA
The 2000 medal awarded by Congress

The Navajo code was an encryption method used during the Pacific War of the USA against Japan from 1942 onwards , which was based on the use of members of the North American Indian tribe of the Navajo (also Diné ) as code speakers ( English Navajo Code Talker ). The code was developed by 29 men of the tribe. They translated the military instructions into their native Navajo language . This belongs to the Na-Dené language family and is not related to any European or Asian language. This and other measures made the Navajo Code impenetrable.

One of the peculiarities of this language is that Navajo verbs not only the subject , but also to the object conjugated be. The ending of the verb depends on which category the object belongs to: long (e.g. pipe, crayon), slim and agile (snake, leather strap), grainy (sugar, salt), bundled (hay), thick (mud, excrement) ) and many others. The verb also contains adverbs and indicates whether the speaker has experienced the report himself or only knows from "hearsay". For this reason, a single verb can correspond to a whole sentence. This makes it practically impossible for those who are not familiar with the language to understand its meaning.

Two other reasons were that, on the one hand, the tribe was large enough to provide a sufficient number of people and, on the other hand, only 28 non-Navajo people could speak the language (these were mostly anthropologists and missionaries) and that too these belonged neither to Germans nor to Japanese.

The English technical terms, which do not occur in the Navajo language, have been compiled in a lexicon with 274 words and replaced by words from the natural world. Aircraft were given bird names and ships were given names of fish species. Higher officers were “war chiefs”, battle positions “mud clans”, fortifications became “cave settlements” and mortars were “crouching guns”. In addition, a coded phonetic alphabet was created for the translation of rarely used words and names. For example, the word "Pacific" was spelled out as "pig, ant, cat, ice, fox, ice, cat" and then translated into the Navajo language as "bi-sodih, wol-la-chee, moasi, tkin, ma-e, tkin, moasi. ”To avoid deciphering by frequency analyzes, other words were also used as substitutes , as is known from homophonic codes.

Thomas H. Begay, one of the last surviving code talkers, reported in 2018, at the age of 92, that after landing in Normandy on February 19, 1945, he sent 800 messages within 48 hours. When he received a note with a radio message, he translated it into his own language. The Navajo who received the message translated it back into English. “We were human cipher machines, only much faster than a machine”. Since then, Begay has been fighting for a national museum that honors the history of code talkers.

The code could not be cracked by the Japanese decryption specialists during the entire Second World War . Former Japanese intelligence chief Seizo Arisue admitted that although the American Air Force Code had been deciphered, no progress had been made with the Navajo Code. The fact that the Diné were chosen as code spokesman was - apart from the fact that this tribal language was absolutely incomprehensible to all other tribes and all other peoples - above all because the Diné were the only Indian tribe in the USA that was not yet German Had been visited by researchers. As an ally of Japan, Germany could otherwise have passed on significant information about the language.

It was not until 1968 that the US government abandoned the previously applicable secrecy about the Navajo Code.

The Congress had the code talkers, the Golden Medal of Honor awarded in the 2,001th The other Navajo veterans were also honored. The members of the 33 tribes who had served as radio operators, however, had to wait until November 2013 before Congress also awarded them the Medal of Honor. This year, the code talkers were also honored publicly for the first time with a ceremony in the White House .

On June 4, 2014, Chester Nez, the last of the 29 Navajo people who developed the Navajo Code and were the very first to be trained as Navajo Code Talkers, died.

In 1982, August 14th was declared National Navajo Code Talkers Day to commemorate the Navajo service during World War II .

In Windtalkers , an American war film from 2002, the meaning of the Navajo Code is discussed.

In 2013 the Native American Code Talkers were inducted into the Hall of Honor (German: Ehrenhalle) of the National Security Agency NSA.

Web links

Commons : Navajo code talkers  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet . 5th edition. Scribner, 1996, ISBN 0-684-83130-9 , pp. 550 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ↑ a b c d Stephen Pincock: Secret Codes: The Most Famous Encryption Techniques and Their History . Bastei Lübbe, 2007, ISBN 3-431-03734-8 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
  3. ↑ Frank Herrmann: Who speaks in riddles . In: Rheinische Post , October 27, 2018, p. E1.
  4. ↑ a b Codetalker. Marines - The Corps' Official Magazine, October 2009, accessed June 9, 2011 .
  5. ^ Joseph Kolb: Last of Navajo 'code talkers' dies in New Mexico. In: Reuters . June 4, 2014, accessed December 11, 2017 .
  6. ^ Navajo Code Talkers and the Unbreakable Code. Central Intelligence Agency , November 6, 2008, accessed June 9, 2011 .