User:StroudIL/Sandbox

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Known as Navajo Code Talkers
It is a great American story that is still largely unknown. A small group of young Navajo men answered the call of duty, created an unbreakable code from the ancient language of their people and in the process became great warriors and patriots. Their code played a roll in saving countless lives and hastened the end of World War II. They served with distinction in every major engagement in the Pacific theater from 1942-1945.

How it all began
During the first few months of the war, Japanese intelligence experts broke every code the U.S. forces created. With many fluent English speakers at their disposal, the Japanese were able to sabotage messages and ambush Allied troops. To combat this, increasingly complex codes were created. At Guadalcanal, military leaders finally complained that sending and receiving these codes required hours of encryption and decryption. It could take up to two and a half hours for a single message. Clearly a better way to communicate was urgently needed. Phillip Johnston, a civilian living in California, had the answer. As the son of a Protestant missionary, he had grown up on the Navajo reservation and was one of only a few outsiders fluent in the difficult Navajo language. Since it had no alphabet and was almost impossible to master without early exposure, it had great potential as an indecipherable code. After impressing top commanders with a demonstration, he was given permission to begin a Code Talker test program. An elite unit of 29 Navajo Code Talkers, recruited by Johnston, was formed in early 1942. Although the code was modified and expanded throughout the war, this first group was the one to conceive it. They are often reverently referred to as the "original 29". After the war, it was discovered that these first recruits were as young as 15 and as old as 35. (Most lacked birth certificates, so it was impossible to verify ages.)

The Code and Code Talking
The code they created at Camp Pendleton was ingenious as well as effective. Originally, the code used approximately 200 terms but grew to over 600 by the end of the war. It could communicate in 20 seconds what machines of the time took 30 minutes to encode. Native terms were used for the military terms or equipment they resembled. For example, the Navajo word for turtle was code for "tank" and a dive-bomber was a "chicken hawk". In addition to these terms, words could be spelled out using Navajo words assigned to individual letters of the alphabet. The selection was based on the first letter of the Navajo word's English meaning. For example, "Wo-La-Chee" means "ant" and would represent the letter "A". In this way the Code Talkers could quickly and accurately communicate with each other in a way that even uninitiated Navajos could not understand.

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