Veterans Day event recognizes the contributions of a unique U.S. Marines unit that used its Native language to help win World War II
Saturday at the La Jolla memorial’s annual Veterans Day event, which drew about 250 people for speeches, a flyover of retired military planes, and the unveiling of a plaque recognizing the Code Talkers’ accomplishments., assistant division commander, 1st Marine Division.
No one else could because the Navajo language was not widely used and it was mostly unwritten. That made it ideal as a code that would stymie Japanese eavesdroppers, who had been successfully deciphering other U.S. communications in the island-hopping war.went through Marine training in San Diego in mid-1942 and next learned how to operate radio equipment. Then they got sent to Camp Elliott, a base that occupied land now part of Tierrasanta, Santee and Mission Trails Regional Park.
At Camp Elliott, over a period of about six weeks, they “weaponized” Navajo into a code that could relay information about military operations, Ryans said. The Navajo word for hummingbird was used to identify a fighter plane. A Navajo term that translated as “iron fish” represented a submarine.. The code worked without the Japanese figuring it out, and more Navajos were deployed in two-man teams to the front lines. In all, about 400 worked communications during the war.
After the war, they came home and had to keep quiet about what they’d done. Military leaders thought they might need the code again some day and ordered it kept secret. In 1968, their work was declassified, and the public slowly learned of the code’s significance. In 2001, the Code Talkers received theOnly three of them remain. None attended Saturday’s ceremony, but a half-dozen descendants did, including Hawthorne. He, too, is a military veteran and also CEO of theHawthorne noted that at the time of the war, many Native Americans were denied the rights other citizens took for granted, such as voting.
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