Clarence Wolfguts

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Code talkers served their country well

Friday, July 26, 2002

By BERNARD BOSSOM AND WILLIAM C. MEADOWS
NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORIANS

Many Americans have recently been introduced to the American Indian code talkers of World War II by the MGM epic, "Windtalkers." However, like the blind man who touched an elephant's trunk and described that animal as being long and tubular, the current vision of the code talkers is incomplete.

There were 17 tribes, not just one, that provided our military forces on the battlefield with this direct form of voice radio communication. When Indian code talkers were brought into battlefield communications, their monitored messages became wholly incomprehensible to the enemy. Their codes were never broken because the enemy didn't realize that the languages used and the codes built upon them were the languages of different American Indian nations.

Traditional techniques used code books by both the sender and the receiver and could take a half hour or longer to understand. The code talkers, however, would speak and the listener would translate into English immediately.

Code talkers were also used in World War I. Fifteen Choctaw from the Oklahoma 36th Infantry Division were first used on Oct. 28, 1918, in an assault that overwhelmed the German troops at Forest Ferme in France. They spoke in their everyday language (unencoded everyday language is called Type 2 messaging) and were viewed as responsible for the halt of many German offensives and for important advances by American forces. As word spread in military circles about their success, other Choctaw, Comanche, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Osage and Yankton Sioux were recruited by other units. [Note: the original column incorrectly identified the first tribe of code talkers.]

It's ironic that at this same time, the U.S. government's official Indian assimilation policy was marked by the prohibition of the use of native languages by Indian children and adults. The object of this policy was to wholly eradicate the Indians' cultures, religions and languages and forcefully promote their assimilation into the white society and to adopt the English language. This policy was largely a failure.

In 1940, the U.S. Army viewed the Nazi conquests as a forecast of an imminent war in which the United States would become involved. They recruited Indians to develop new codes that were built upon their native languages.

These codes were even more confounding to an untrained listener -- even from the same tribe. (The code built upon a native language was called Type 1 messaging.) This program included 17 Chippewa and Oneida, 17 Comanche, 19 Sac & Fox (Mesquakie) and later, in 1941, 11 Hopi.

During World War II the Assiniboine, Cherokee, Choctaw, Kiowa, Pawnee, Sioux (both Dakota and Lakota), Menominee, Muscogee Creek and Seminole were also recruited for Type 2 code talking. Upon learning of the Army's success, in 1942 the Marine Corps recruited 420 Navaho and began to train them in Type 1 code talking.

The Navaho code talkers' performance at Iwo Jima was so critical in that battle that Maj. Howard Conner stated, "Were it not for the Navaho(s), the Marines would never have taken the island."

When World War II ended, a threat of war with the Soviet Union loomed. All code talkers were sworn to secrecy. They took this pledge seriously. In 1997, a reporter telephoned Clarence Wolfguts of the Pine Ridge Sioux to schedule an interview having learned that he had been a code talker in World War II.

Clarence's wife told the reporter that he had made an awful mistake. "Clarence," she said, "was never any code talker." As it turned out, Clarence was a member of the Pine Ridge Sioux code talker team. For 53 years of marriage he never broke his pledge of secrecy -- not even to his wife.

The Navaho served in the Pacific in the Corps and, together with Muscogee Creek, in the Navy. Lakota were Army code talkers in several Pacific Island battles. Muscogee Creek were used in the battle of Attu in the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. Comanche served with the 4th Signal Company in the Fourth Infantry Division Motorized in Europe.

The Navaho have received deserved honor for their military service. However, similar recognition waits for those of the other 16 tribes. In 1963, Gen. Charles De Gaulle, then president of France, created the new Ordre Nationale du Merite (National Order of Merit), the third highest medal awarded by the ....more