This website was created as an 8th grade Social Studies project.
Students created fictional personas based on research
Students created fictional personas based on research
Need For An Unbreakable Code
During the beginning of World War II, the Japanese were known for their code breaking ability. Codes were important to war because they kept enemies from figuring out strategies when they intercepted communications. At the time, the Japanese were expert code breakers, so the Allies needed an even better code than they would have otherwise. Therefore, when Philip Johnston presented his idea to the Marines, they desperately needed a good code because the Japanese had broken every other code that they used.
The Navajo Language
![Picture](/uploads/2/3/3/9/23391306/4313870.jpg?750)
My people's language provided the perfect base for an unbreakable code for a variety of reasons. One reason that the Navajo language was the best suited for a code was that the same word pronounced different ways had different meanings. Also, only 28 people outside of the Navajo tribe spoke Navajo in 1941, and none of them were German or Japanese. Navajo didn't even have a written language, so there couldn't be any books on Navajo for the Germans or Japanese to study.
The Unbreakable Code
The code we used during the war included around 411 terms that were not part of our everyday language, partially because our language had no words for the military terms necessary to communicate during wartime or the places we would be fighting, and partially to make the code hard to crack even for someone who had mastered the many complexities of the Navajo language. The code was proved to be uncrackable, even to other Navajos. For example, a Navajo who was not a Code Talker was taken prisoner at Bataan and forced to listen to Code Talkers transmit messages. After the war, he told them "I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying."