Thursday, November 25, 2010

THE UNITED STATES MARINES NAVAJO
CODE TALKERS OF WORLD WAR II

The Navajo Code Talkers, as they became known, were the key to America's success in World War II. They were Navajo United States Marines who created a secret code that made it possible for the United States to defeat the Japanese in World War II and end the war. Before World War II, every code that the United States had created for warfare had been broken. Known as experts at code deciphering, the Japanese were never able to decipher the Navajo's secret code.

The success of the code was due, in a large part, to the complexity of the Navajo language. At the outbreak of World War II, there were only thirty non-Navajos who could speak the language, and not all of them could speak it fluently. Philip Johnston, had grown up on the Navajo Reservation, and could speak Navajo very well. He was a veteran of World War I, and had heard about a battle in that war, in which several Choctaw Indians were talking to each other by radio in their native language. It completely fooled the Germans, who were listening. The tide of the battle turned around, and the Americans won. With his knowledge of the Navajo people and their language, Mr. Johnston thought that the Navajos could easily devise a way of talking that no one would be able to understand.

With the somewhat skeptical approval by the U.S. Marines of Mr. Johnston's idea, recruitment for Code Talkers began in the spring of 1942. Two recruiters from the U.S. Marine Corps went to the Navajo Reservation and met with Chee Dodge, Chairman of the Tribal Council. He liked the idea and sent out word by shortwave radio to the Reservation. There was an immediate, excited response. The candidates had to be fluent in both English and Navajo. Many of them were just school boys and lied about their age, just to have the opportunity to go and fight for their country and protect it from the Japanese. Twenty-nine Navajos were inducted into the Marines.

These twenty-nine men were sent by train to boot camp at Camp Elliott in California where they became the 382nd Platoon, USMC. There, they had to learn to survive the harsh environment they would encounter in the Pacific. Due to their ancestral background and way of life, the Navajos proved to have outstanding physical endurance and qualities. The challenge in their training came when staff officers who were worried that there might be someone who could understand Navajo, asked them to encode the Navajo language. Hence, the creation of the unbreakable code. After this code was created, it was tested on some Navajos who weren't Code Talkers and they were unable to understand it. The Marines then decided to start training 200 more Code Talkers.

The 382nd Platoon, USMC, was sent to Guadalcanal to begin fighting. When they first arrived in the Pacific, some Marine field commanders were confused about the role the Code Talkers were to play. But as they paired with the Communication Specialists in the Pacific, their true value became apparent. They handled all major battlefield communications while the Americans were fighting the Japanese in the Pacific. Not one of their messages was deciphered. In the last battle of the war, the fight for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, they sent more than 800 critical messages. By the end of the war there were 540 Navajo Marines and about 420 of these were trained as Code Talkers. When the Code Talkers returned home after the war, most of them participated in the Enemy Way Ceremony, a native ritual, performed for getting rid of evil spirits.

It is almost certain that America would not have been able to win the war without the Navajo Code Talkers, and it is hard to estimate the number of American lives that they saved. It is believed that their code is the only truly unbreakable code in the history of warfare.

MORE ON PHILIP JOHNSTON
Philip Johnston was an engineer living in California at the start of World War II. He was the son of a Navajo missionary. He was not a Navajo, but grew up on the Navajo Reservation. He knew all of the Navajo customs and spoke the language fluently. He was the person who had the concept of using the complex Navajo language for communications to help defeat the Japanese in World War II.

Philip Johnston was a veteran of World War I, and heard how eight Choctaw Indians had sent messages to each other in their native tongue during a battle against the Germans at the end of World War I. These few messages had helped to win the battle, since the Germans had no idea of what was being said. He knew that the military were searching for a new secret code to use against the Japanese. He thought that the Navajo language would be the perfect answer. Mr. Johnston presented his idea to Major General Clayton B. Vogel, USMC, Commanding General of the Pacific Fleet. General Vogel allowed Mr. Johnston to give a demonstration at Camp Elliott in California using a few Navajos who resided in California. The demonstration was so successful that General Vogel recommended the recruitment into the Marine Corps of at least 200 Navajos for the Code Talker Program. Almost immediately, 29 Navajos were recruited, and they started developing their unbreakable code.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving Day?
We can trace this historic American Christian tradition to the year 1623. After the harvest crops were gathered in November 1623, Governor William Bradford of the 1620 Pilgrim Colony, "Plymouth Plantation" in Plymouth, Massachusetts proclaimed.This is the origin of our annual Thanksgiving Day celebration.


Congress of the United States has proclaimed National Days of Thanksgiving to Almighty God many times throughout the following years. On November 1, 1777, by order of Congress, the first National Thanksgiving Proclamation was proclaimed, and signed by Henry Laurens, President of Continental Congress. The third Thursday of December, 1777 was thus officially set aside.

Then again, on January 1, 1795, our first United States President, George Washington, wrote his famed National Thanksgiving Proclamation, in which he said, Thursday, the 19th day of February, 1795 was thus set aside by George Washington as a National Day of Thanksgiving.

Many years later, on October 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed, by Act of Congress, an annual National Day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens.

In this Thanksgiving proclamation, our 16th President announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, by the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. So it is that on Thanksgiving Day each year, Americans give thanks to Almighty God for all His blessings and mercies toward us throughout the year.

I am thankful that God watched over me in all my years of life and kept me safe on the battlefields of war. If the Lord is willing, I will celebrate Thursday, November 25, with a Thanksgiving dinner that will be a Butterball Turkey with cornbread and sausage stuffing. This is the recipe that I will use.

Cornbread Stuffing With Sausage
Ingredients
1 pound ground sausage
2 cups chopped celery
2 large onions, chopped
5 cups crumbled cornbread
5 cups seasoned bread crumbs
2 3/4 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon sage

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Place sausage, celery and onions in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium high heat until evenly brown. Drain, crumble and set aside.

In a large bowl combine sausage mixture with cornbread, bread crumbs, chicken broth, poultry seasoning and sage. Mix well and transfer to a 9x12 inch baking dish.

Bake, covered, for 45 minutes or until well set and cooked through. Yield 12 servings.

Tennessee Cornbread
1-1/2 cups white self-rising cornmeal
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons melted shortening or bacon fat
3/4 cup buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Grease an 8-inch iron skillet. Mix well all the ingredients together. Pour into the skillet. Bake for about 20 minutes or until brown on top.