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Show dfvtm jmfjnu by MICHAEL NOLAN Until 1968, the military contributions of a select grouf of American Indian World War II veterans was classified information. Only now is the full significance of their As a role in World War I and II coming to light. Marine recruit, ever had before added which practically doubled the vocabulary from which they operated, and more Navaos joined the original 29 "You had to be fluent in Navajo and English, saw Dr Samuel Billison, a member of the Navajo Code The young Nava0 was filled with a loyalry to his land and a young man's desire to explore new horizons After amving in Phoenix, Holiday took a train to San Diego, Calif, w'here he entered the grueling challenges of Marine Corps boot camp. Sometimes you Talkers Association based in Kayenta, Ariz "A lot of them who took the course on the Navajo code didnt moke it " About 400 eventually did qualify When they completed their training, they were shipped out to the Pacific Theater I was up in the could hear people crying at night because the training was hard, he recalls We (Navajo) were used to hard times because we lived out on the reservation, so it didn't seem so hard for us " Upon his transfer to Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, front lines a lot of times," says Holiday, who served in the 4th Marine Division in Saipan, Iwo Jima, the Marshall Islands, and Tinian. ' Whenever they needed Calif, he made an exciting discovery "There was a whole bunch of Naa0 Marines. The first day, a Navajo instructor told me that the reason I was there was to learn the code of the Navajo," he says. sages night and day In the thick of battle, they would send practicalh 8 hours, passing vital infornonstop messages tor about mation enemy fire, troop movement, and the need tor medical help Military historians note that during the first 48 hours of the invasion of Iwojima Navajo radio units sent and received more than 800 Samuel Tom Holiday remembers well the bus ride from his school in Provo, Utah, to Phoenix, Ariz , in 19-He was traveling farther from his home than he (7 C ::?rj 'im vfiSiTjjv "vecret weapon," Language mu Ki uyi Samuel Tom p'r'vr I Holiday. I 1 4i V 7 "I Philip Johnston, whose parents were missionaries to the Navajos, had convinced military leaders that messages transmitted in Navajo would baffle Japanese code breakers, just as Choctaw soldiers and members of other American Indian nations had done in World War I Unlike most languages, Navajo was unwritten and virtually impossible for an adult to learn. Every syllable carries meaning, and A sometimes a single word can have a four different meanings depend- ing upon intonation Dialects vary IwY from region to region and even within Navajo clans To further confound enemy r eavesdroppers, che 29 Navajo soldiers originally recruited for I this assignment created a code 1 1 within their language. They Private Flnt Clasa Preston Toledo (left) and Private First Class Frank Toledo, cousins and Navajos, will relay orders over a field radio in their native tongue. invented new words or combined words to communicate 211 essential military terms. As the war progressed, new terms were Page 8 American Profile something even water more weapons or more ammunition or we would get on the radio and send mes- 15-1- messages with 100 percent accuracy "My language became a secret weapon," Holidav says Dangers for Holiday were not limited to enemv fire and harrowing island invasions. Twice he was captured by fellow Marines who mistook him as Japanese "On Saipan, a Marine pointed a bayonet in my back, he recalls. "I told him, Hey, wait. 1 m a radioman I m a Marine 4 On another occasion, he was surrounded by five or six angry Marines who believed him co be a Japanese soldier who had sneaked into camp Both tense situations required soldiers from his own company to verify his identity Valor finally revealed When the war was Sty over, these radiomen were orders from their commanding offigiven strict cers to keep silent about the code because military leaders wanted to maintain the option of using |