Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Speaking ‘crazy Navajo’

Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999 | 9:24 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

IN A RECENT COLUMN I wrote about former Navajo leader Peter MacDonald and mentioned he had been a U.S. Marine Navajo Code Talker in the Pacific during World War II. This resulted in several telephone calls asking me what is so special about Navajos talking to each other in their native language? Because the warriors of World War II are becoming fewer in number every year the public should learn more about them. Also, now that winning professional golfer Notah Begay, a Navajo, is becoming popular we should know more about his heritage.

Code talking required the young Navajos, some enlisted as young as 15, to learn almost a whole new Navajo language. Gerald Knowles in "America's Secret Weapon in Defeating the Japanese in World War Two" tells readers, "The Navajo marines had literally created an alternative Navajo language. They changed around and substituted words. The result was mixed up Navajo. Not even native Navajo speakers tested with the new code talk knew what these Navajo marines were talking about. 'That's crazy Navajo,' one remarked. In addition, none of the Navajo code was written down. It was all committed to memory! The Navajo Code Talk was born and became one of the most potent weapons used by the United States in the Pacific campaign."

Here are some examples of the language used by the code talkers with the first word followed by Navajo and then the literal translation:

L.C. Kukral, in a Navy document, goes further and explains:

"When a Navajo code talker received a message, what he heard was a string of seemingly unrelated Navajo words. The code talker first had to translate each Navajo word into its English equivalent. Then he used only the first letter of the English equivalent in spelling an English word.

"Thus, the Navajo words 'wol-la-chee' (ant), 'be-la-sana' (apple) and 'tse-nill' (axe) all stood for the letter 'a.' One way to say the word 'Navy' in Navajo code would be 'tsah (needle) wol-la-chee (ant) ah-keh-diglini (victor) tsah-ah-dzoh (yucca)' ... most letters had more than one Navajo word representing them."

During World War II, 540 Navajos served as Marines and about 400 of them trained as code talkers. They participated in every Pacific island assault made by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Four years ago Thomas Begay, a code talker from Window Rock, Ariz., sent me his thoughts about protecting our flag. Begay fought on Iwo Jima, where his unit raised the flag on Mt. Surabachi. Six months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Navajo Tribal Council passed a resolution that they would defend the flag and country from aggression.

Begay wrote, "At the reservation school at Ft. Defiance, near the Navajo Nation headquarters in Arizona, where I went to grade school, we started each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. To this day that practice continues. Respect for the flag and our country is taught at a very early age on the reservation. The Navajo still feel the same way today as we did more than 50 years ago -- we will defend our land, America, and its living symbol, the flag."

Just thought it was time for another column looking at a special people who responded to the challenges faced by a great generation of Americans.