The Unbreakable Code: Navajo code talker talks of World War II experiences but doesn’

[top1371]

They didn't announce this event to the public until it was over...... I missed it


http://www.lebanondailyrecord.com/ar...ews/news01.txt

The Unbreakable Code: Navajo code talker talks of World War II experiences but doesn’t consider himself a hero

By Julie Turner

As a child, Samuel Tom Holiday hid in the hills of Monument Valley, Utah, to keep from being sent to the boarding school that government agents sent Navajo children to so that they could “learn the ways of the white man.”

He never dreamed that as a young man, he would become a warrior alongside people of every race in the battles of World War II and save the lives of thousands of his fellow Americans as a Marine Code Talker.

Holiday, 81, spoke Thursday evening at Lebanon’s Community of Christ Church, in observance of Veterans Day and National Native American Heritage Month. He is only one of about 30 surviving Navajo men that served in WWII as Code Talkers. During WWII, there were about 300 active Code Talkers.

He was about 12 before he ever laid eyes on a white man, and that was only at a distance. He said stories of his great-grandmother dying while being forced to the reservation by the white man that were told by his grandmother made him afraid.

His grandmother would scream in her sleep, “Here they come again.” He was able to stay hidden until an injury at the age of 15 sent him to a hospital, where Holiday says he was “caught.”

Navajo children were forbidden from speaking their native language at the boarding school, and Holiday would sneak cookies from the school’s kitchen and give them to the older children to help him learn English.

“I would take the cookies to the older children so they would help me learn English,” he said. “I might have been hungry, but I gave them to the older children so they would help me learn. Today I still learning. I still stumble on English.”

In 1943, Holiday was 18 years old and enrolled in a trade school in Utah when a Marine recruiter and another Navajo man came to the school.

“They asked how old I was,” he recalled. “I told them I was 18, and they said, ‘You volunteer to be Marine.’”

Holiday didn’t know that he had been recruited to the Marine Corps for a very special reason. His daughter, Helena, said he had no choice in what his “assignment” would be.

“For him, it was something the Marines asked him to do,” she said. “He felt that was his assignment.”

The Navajo Code Talkers used a special code based on the unwritten Navajo language to transmit and receive messages. The code was never broken by enemies of the allied forces during WW II.

According to historic accounts, the idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke the language. Johnston, raised on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military’s search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languages had been used in World War I to encode messages.

Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity.

Early in 1942, Johnston met with Maj. Gen. Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff to convince them of the Navajo language’s value as code. Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions, demonstrating that Navajos could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds. Machines of the time required 30 minutes to perform the same job. Convinced, Vogel recommended to the Commandant of the Marine Corps that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos.

Holiday went to boot camp in San Diego, Calif. He said the training was very difficult and he would often hear soldiers crying because they were in so much pain. He admitted that it was physically challenging for him, but being a Navajo helped him.

“We (Navajo) were used to hard times because we live out on the reservation, so it didn’t seem so hard for us,” he said. “Those soldiers who had flat feet hurt a lot.”

He also added that he had visited Marine boot camps in recent years, and things seemed to have changed a little.

“It’s easy now,” he said, laughing. “It’s not so hard.”

Holiday was eventually transferred to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, Calif., where he met other Navajos.

“There was a whole bunch of Navajo Marines,” Holiday said. “The first day, a Navajo instructor told me that the reason I was there was to learn the code of the Navajo.”

At first, Holiday didn’t believe that the Navajo would be able to transmit the codes without the Japanese understanding what they were saying.

“I was told that a lot of Japanese went to American universities,” he said. “I was told that they had learned all they could about America and that’s why they bombed Pearl Harbor.”

Holiday trained for about two months prior to being sent into battle.

During his three years in the Marine Corps, Holiday was with the 4th Marine Division, 5th Regiment, H & S Company. He served duties on the Island of Roi-Namur, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Marshall Islands and Saipan. During the initial fighting on Saipan, a bomb exploded near Holiday and buried him in the sand. The blast permanently damaged his hearing. He was awarded the Purple Heart for his injuries.

He also was captured twice by fellow Marines who thought he was a Japanese solider trying to sneak into Marine encampments by wearing a Marine uniform. He still has a scar on his back from the bayonet of a fellow Marine.

“I tell them I was radio operator,” he said. “They didn’t believe me.”

Members of his unit would come to his aid, and tell the other Marines that Holiday was their “chief.”

Holiday said the code talkers were responsible for the saving of thousands of lives and helped end the war.

“We code-talked day and night,” he said. “The Japs would get in on our frequencies and try to make us make a mistake, but we would keep talking the code. They didn’t break it, or make us make mistakes. They keep trying to mess up our words, but they didn’t.”

Holiday was in the second wave of Marines that landed on Iwo Jima and remembers the blue and yellow beaches. He also remembers transmitting for help.

“There were wall-to-wall dead Marines,” he said. “I see things flying way up in the air. I remember the sky being kind of orange-red. There were Marines calling for help. Some dying, some crying. There were Marines calling for someone to save them. Even after the war, I see these things.

“We set up communications about one mile from the shore. I was sending messages, receiving messages, night and day, in the rain. I called for help. I said that we needed more ammunition, we need water, food and there were wounded. There were Marines pinned down and they needed artillery. I sent those messages.”

Holiday also said his mother taught him the “Navajo way” and it was at times difficult for him to be a Marine.

“When I was a little boy and would herd sheep with my mom, she would tell me never destroy plants, the herb, trees, never kill animals or insects,” he recalled. “Never kill nothing that belong to the Heavenly Fathers and Mother Earth. She said Mother Nature will take care of that, not you. When I would see the dead Japs, I would think that I was the one who sent the artillery to kill them. When I see the dead Japanese laying there, I looked at them and they would look like Navajo. One Marine pushed me and said, ‘What’s the matter with you? Are you afraid of the dead Japs?’ It really affected me somehow. They were human beings, just like us.”

Holiday said there were times he wondered if he would make it home from the war.

“I kept thinking I would come back, but maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I get killed. When I was going to war, my father had a ceremony for me one night. I was on furlough and that give me courage. I always think of that.”

On a trip to Ground Zero, Holiday was waiting along with several other tourists for a journalist to make an appearance when a group of Japanese tourists approached. Holiday, dressed in his Code Talker uniform, was approached by a young Japanese boy.

“He said, ‘Thank you very much for stopping the war,’” Holiday recalled. “When this boy hugged me, I couldn’t help it, I started crying. I remember that.”

When asked if he thought of himself as a hero, Holiday said he did not.

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t feel that way. The reason I went was for my country.”

He continued that despite the stories told to him as a child about what the white soldiers had done to his family in previous generations, he held no resentment when he went into the Marine Corps. He only thought of protecting what was precious to him.

“My great-grandma was very old and died to on the way to the reservation, my grandma held her while she died. My grandma was a prisoner for four years, and it was the soldiers who did that, but I wanted to fight,” he said. “I think of the Navajo settlement on the reservation. I think of a holy place there. I fought to protect that holy place. I fought to protect Navajo land.”

Upon his discharge, Holiday and the other Code Talkers were told that they were reserve soldiers and they might be needed again, so they were never to speak to anyone about their role in the war. Holiday’s wife and children were unaware of what his role was in the Marines.

“I was told to never talk about it,” Holiday said. “I kept my mouth shut for 20 years. Code Talkers never even told our families. I felt like a forgotten old solider on a reservation for 20 years.”

The role the Navajo Code Talkers played in WWII was kept classified until 1968. Holiday now travels across the country telling about the Code Talkers and their role in the war.

“It was secret for over 20 years,” he said. “Might as well let the world know about it. I have met really nice people and it’s a great honor to tell them about the Code Talkers.”

[yellowwing]

Great post, Top! Another outstanding example of Marines "Just doing my job."

Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue

[hrscowboy]

Outstanding Top this makes an Old Marine stand tall with the greatest respect to the Native American of this United states of America... Hand salute to the Code talkers..