Doomed to Fail - Ep 191: Ancient Voices in Modern Warfare - Navajo Code Talkers

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

This is the incredible story of the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II! We'll talk a little about the history of the Navajo and how the United States really wanted them to forget their heritage, and especially their language. Navajo children were sent to boarding schools and forced to learn English, so much so that they were punished if they spoke any of their native language at school. Of course, they still spoke Navajo (an extremely complex language that you have to learn from birth or you have no chance) at home.  Forward to WWII, the US needed a truly unbreakable code for its invasion of Japan. 29 Navajo men were recruited into the Marines to create the Navajo Code. They used their words (like potato for grenade), plus a Navajo word for every letter of the English alphabet—creating a 400+ word code that truly was never once cracked!Learn more with us! Sources:Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two - Joseph Bruchac - https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/code-talker-a-novel-about-the-navajo-marines-of-world-war-two_joseph-bruchac/246548/item/3819967/? Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII - Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila - https://www.amazon.com/Code-Talker-Memoir-Original-Talkers/dp/0425247856/Who Were the Navajo Code Talkers? - James Buckley, Jr, - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537742/who-were-the-navajo-code-talkers-by-james-buckley-jr-illustrated-by-gregory-copeland/ Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. We are live, Taylor. How are you? Good. How are you? Good. I'm very upbeat and positive. I love it.

My husband and I were talking yesterday because his chat GPT, they're very professional. and mine were like friends like does yours use emojis and talks to you? Yeah. Like his doesn't. His is like a thing. So I asked him a question about a sink

and we like had a whole conversation about it and then at the end it said, enjoy your new sync era. And Juan was like a kill if he talks to you like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well I also like just talk to it every now I sound like a crazy person now.

But every now and then when I'm bored I'll like literally just talk to it. I'll be like tell me a funny joke. He's like what about this? And like tell me joke. Like you know. Yeah. No, I think most people, I think a lot of people do.

I was, I thought most people probably just use it like a secondary version of Google where they just type their question and then that's it. But like, I'm like sharing screenshots with it. Like, hey, what do you think of this? Yeah, my nail lady uses it as a therapist. You told me that. Seriously? Yeah. You can do that.

Well, yeah. I mean, you can be like, I pretend that you're a behavioral therapist. I'll probably be like, well, not officially, but da-da-da-da, help you. Interesting. All right. Well, lessons learned. Anyway, we'll talk about how AI destroyed humanity in a future episode that we will record from our book. Or enriched humanity, Taylor.

That's also possible. And or and or. Because we are doomed to fail, we talk about history's most notorious disasters and epic failures twice a week. And I'm Taylor, joined by Fars. And today is my turn. And you're going to cover Skynet. I should. God, we should just have an episode where we just watch Terminator 2 and talk about it.

why don't we? I don't know. Nothing's stopping us. We can do whatever we want. Yeah, it's like Doug does movies. It's so fun. So I read three books this week. They're short.

One was literally a children's book, but a children's chapter book. But I am not going to make you guess. I am going to tell you the story of the Navajo Code Talkers in World War II. This is also a naked movie, isn't it? It is. I did not watch that movie, though. I should have. It's called Wind Talkers. I'll get around to it. But I read Code Talker, a novel about the Navajo Marines of World War II by Joseph Burrock. I read Co-Tocker, the first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo co-talkers of World War II, Chester Nez, with Julia Scheis-Avila. They would work together. And then I read this kid's book, Who Were the Navajo Co-Tockers by James Buckley, Jr. everything I read says Navajo it is hard for me to not say Navajo because that's what

I always said but I'm going to try to say Navajo not that that is even the right word if that makes sense I've always said Navajo now I can't remember which one I'm supposed to say Navajo not you say Navajo but I think the way you're supposed to say is Navajo okay now I'm going to say Navajo I'm going to try okay that's what I mean to say I'm sorry if I if I mess up. I think it's like Nevada versus Nevada. Like, I don't think it matters. Yeah.

Because I do see Nevada and I'm from Nevada. So I think that's part of it too. Right. That is definitely part of it. Okay. So now I can't remember what we're supposed to say, but the Navajo, right? Okay. They are, I want to talk about who they are, their history.

Their history is part of the United States and their contribution to World War II via the coat talkers. Do you know a lot about them? I know nothing about them, actually. I don't even know. like the words actually don't even blend in any like i would assume that they're breaking native american code language in germany but i don't know why they would so i'd know nothing okay cool um i've also been watching a lot of the x files this is unrelated but in the x files every episode they say something and then they describe it so it was like kind of just like this

where i'd go fars what do you know about the navajo code talkers and you would say you mean the elite group of people da da da and you would like answer it like anyone has a conversation like that but that's what they always do it in the X-Files. And I was like, it'd be funny if you knew it and you said that the answer like that. Yeah, well, unfortunately not. Anyway, so the Navajo people actually call themselves the Dene people.

It just means the people. So in their language, they are the Dene. The Spanish named them Navajo. There's a couple places that it comes from. There was like an area. They called the Apachu de Navajo. and then Navajo comes from the Tiwau language that means a large area of cultivated lands so it just kind of like came together and now we say Navajo most likely they came to the southwest via like Alaska and Canada about a thousand years ago possibly because there was like a volcano that made it really dark up there and they came down which we've heard of Southwest being what like California Arizona yes Arizona not California but they're like Arizona New Mexico like that area Texas were they Texas no more like in that like in that like

between like Arizona, New Mexico, Utah is where they are right now. Okay, okay. Yeah. Largely, they hunted and gathered. They started to raise sheep and such when the Spanish came over and, like, introduced those animals to them. And then they did a lot of, like, sheep herding and would have, like, little towns where they would be able to trade and things like that. So of the many issues that happened when the Europeans came to the Americas, is. they would like make deals with different tribes and different people and assume that they spoke for everyone you know so they would make a deal with like one navajo chief but he was like the mayor of his town he wasn't like the chief of all of them and like that was not communicated and like no one really understood that so they would like go into people's homes and be like well this guy said we could do this and they'd be like we don't listen to that guy you know so there's a lot of like you know

miscommunication and exploitation of the Native American peoples in general, we know. So in the 1860s, Kit Carson, have you heard of him? No. They named Carson City, Nevada after him. And after this, I feel like maybe we should try to petition to not have to be named Carson City. Because he was ordered to destroy just a ton of native land and a ton of native people. And him and his troops, as they were moving west, were doing just that. they in 1864 the Navajo had their own version of the Trail of Tears we talked about

the Trail of Tears before it's where the Cherokee had to move out of the Northeast this was moving all of the Navajo people to like one area like in kind of in New Mexico nine it's called the long walk 9000 people had to walk 300 miles in like the New Mexico weather so sometimes it was cold sometimes it was hot and a lot of people died on the way there's stories of like women giving birth on the trail and then just being like shot because they were like slowing everybody down how long did that take um probably a long time it's called the long walk i don't know exactly how long got it more than a jaunt a while yeah yeah um that's where they started to build their reservation where they were trade but it still wasn't nice they were like trapped

they were trapped there they were like they moved them all to one spot they wouldn't let them leave they were afraid of any retribution they didn't have a lot of food um the navajo like in their history, they call it the, they call it the fearing time, basically the time where everyone was scared. No, it's awful. So in 1868, they were able to gain control of their own area, and the Navajo Nation still exists today. It's in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. As of 2020, there are almost 400,000 registered Navajos in the United States, and about half of them live in the Navajo Nation. So it is like an area that is like pulled out of those of those states that is actually land-wise bigger than 10 other United States states, but it's not a state. It's like a Navajo

nation. Yeah, it's a sovereign territory. I think I've been through there as I drove between L.A. and Dallas. I think I've driven through there because this all sounds very familiar. I think that's exactly the path that you would take is to go through it. I'd love to do a whole episode on that right now. It's super interesting. I'd love to go. But in 1868, they're able to gain control of at least that area, but they're sort of confined. there. So once they're there, also, the U.S. government is still obviously super involved, and they send all of the children to boarding schools. They, like, force them to send their children to these boarding schools. Basically, they're going to boarding school to erase all of their

Navajo traditions. Like, they get there, and they're wearing, like, their beautiful clothes, and they have their long hair, and they're, like, all different, and they're talking in Navajo, and they're excited to be around other kids and all these things. And then they, like, immediately they cut their hair, which is like they don't, they don't do that in their tradition. And if you cut your hair, you have to burn the hair that came off because it's like sacred and a part of you, but they just like cut all their hair, like throw in a pile. So they like really upsets the kids, obviously. And they make them all wear uniforms.

So they kind of make all the same. And they say you cannot speak Navajo at all. Like not even a little bit. You can't even say hi to each other in it. And they do it. And, like, the way that a lot of these things have been done that you've heard were, like, they just, like, yell at you in English until you understand English, which is terrible. Yeah, it's like the Catholic school of teaching. Oh, yeah, they're also Catholic.

Exactly. There you go. Yeah. So one of the schools is called Fort Defiance, which is a fort in, like, New Mexico, Arizona land. And some of the Navajo co-talkers went to boarding school there specifically. So if they speak Navajo in boarding school, they get their mouths wash. out with this brown soap and everybody talks about it because they remember it, like how terrible it was, like literally getting your mouth, we talked about it before, getting your mouth washed

out with soap. And their hair was cut and their names were changed. So obviously we see this all the time with like people who come to another country where you don't speak their language and they try to tell you their name and they Americanize it or they westernize it or they whatever and they make the name sound more easy to understand. But they did things like, like Chester Nez, who's the guy whose book I read, Nez just means tall. And then they say like, who's your dad and he's like oh he's like the tall guy that's how you like call him so like okay then your name is nez and they gave him the name chester so they gave them names like Washington they gave them names like you know just like you know that kind of name there's a ton of them named john

he's like gave them the name john and then they ran out of john they would like do other names as well um yeah john rambo was navajo nation yeah so a lot of them are also have the last name be gay b-e-g-a-y because bagay means son of so they say who are you you say i'm son of of da-da-da-da, and they're like, great, that's your last name. So of the 29 original code talkers, three of them are begazed. And it doesn't mean they're related. It just means that, like, they just wrote that down when they went to boarding school. What?

Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, acknowledge, right? So another thing also, the Navajo is a matriarchal society. So when you get married, you move in with your wife and her family. And if you, if your wife dies, you stay. So, like, you want to have daughter. it's like the opposite so also when they're asking these kids whether your dad's name they were confused because they would never say their dad's name they would say their mom's name you know

another thing as well and they were also like wanted to get they wanted to talk to each other because they're from all different places and like their cousins and they're excited but they would just get in so much trouble if they if they spoke in any navajo at all they also had to be catholic like i said they kind of just added catholicism on to like their older religions and they also just like didn't get a lot of food you know like they treated them pretty pretty pretty fucking terribly. Yeah, it sounds like a constration camp. Yeah, for this poor children. And the whole time they're telling them, like,

you'll never be as great as a white guy, you know, like, but try your best. I think they also did that in the constration camps. Yeah. Most, yes, yes. So, these kids are being told again and again and again and again. You cannot speak Navajo. It is

bad. You have to just forget it. You have to learn English. And they do learn English. But a little bit about Navajo, the language. It is almost not even almost it is impossible to learn unless it is your first language um you it there's no it's not written there's no grammar books like there might be some things now that could help you like sound it out in english or like with english letters but it isn't it was never written it was just like a totally oral language and unless you're born navajo you just can't learn it

there are white people who came to the navajo nation when they were kids when they were like two years old, one years old, and learned enough to like, they called it trade Navajo where they could like talk to people at like the trading post, but they could not be code talkers. Some of them tried, but they didn't speak it well enough. Like that's how hard it is. Like if it's not your first language, you'll never learn it. Real quick, Taylor, should we at this point say what a code talker is? Because you're using the word code talker and I don't totally know what that is. Oh, sure. Well, yeah. We're going to develop a code using Navajo and use it in World War II. got it because it's a language that is almost a dead language and if it's not a dead language it's definitely one that nobody outside of the Americas can speak exactly okay thank you exactly so yes so yeah it's impossible to learn it's a tonal language so you have to be like very precise with the words that you say and there are things that are like an example they used in chester nez's book is

there's a different verb for picking something up depending on the texture of the thing you're picking up. So if I'm like, I'm picking up this feather and I'm picking up this cactus, the word pick up is different. You know, so just like little things like that that like you wouldn't know unless you were born and that's the first thing you spoke. That's like literally the only way to learn it. So yes, to answer your question, in other wars in World War I specifically, The United States used Cheyenne, Cherokee, Comanche, Ho-Chunk, Osage, and the Yachtun-Su languages to talk in a code.

They would use, they would just have people talking in those languages over the airwaves, and eventually those would be broken because there would find someone who spoke Cherokee, or they'd find someone who spoke Comanchee and be able to, like, say what they were saying. So it sounded hard, but it really was like able to, you were able to figure it out. And for the most part, you know, a lot of Native Americans fought in both World War I. in World War II and every other war that we've had. Because, you know, they signed up to defend their homeland. And it was known that we did this during World War I. So in between World War I and two, Japan sent a lot of people to the United States to learn those languages.

So there were Japanese people who could speak, Comanche, who could speak Cheyenne, who could speak those languages because they were expecting us to try to speak those languages over the airwaves and get around them, right? it would suck to have done all that and learned all that and they're like they're doing it in Navajo now it's like shit sorry sorry and they didn't use Navajo because it was so complicated they were just like no one's going to do this forget it you know so they didn't use it another thing that happened in between world war one and two so the Navajo came back from world war one or like all of the the everyone came back from world war one and then we're in the great depression and then in the 1930s the u.s government wanted to control trade and the land in the Navajo Nation. So they did a thing called the Livestock Reduction Act

where they killed like half or more of all the livestock in the Navajo Nation. And a lot of people were just like thrust into poverty because they lost their livelihoods. Half of their income had come from that. Women lost their livelihoods because they would use it for like crafting, use like wool and such. Why do they do that?

Because they said that they wanted to control, like there's a couple of things during the Great Depression that I don't 100% understand where they like burned crops to like try to like control prices and they were trying to they said that the the Navajo livestock was like ruining the land but I don't know if that's true like I'm not 100% yours like a means of control but that was also just a terrible thing that people remember okay um I will someday try to figure out why they did that or the oppression but now it's the 1940s and we're headed into World War II

there are about 50,000 registered Navajos they are now the largest of the nations of of the Native American nations in the United States. And it is World War II. And we talked about, you know, technology rapidly increases during war. At the beginning of the war, you have wildly different technology than you have at the end of the war. And one of the things that they were going to need were wildly new codes and ways to dispel information. They did not use it in Germany. This is after Germany has surrendered and we're just in the Pacific going after Japan.

So in 1941, the day after Pearl Harbor, the Navajo Tribal Council passed a resolution declaring their loyalty to the United States. The resolution said, quote, the Navajo Tribal and the 50,000 Navajo Indians of the Navajo tribe, hereby pledge our wholehearted support to the President of the United States and to our nation in this crisis. We resolve that the Navajo Indians stand ready, as they did in 1918, aid and defender government and its institutions against all subversive and armed conflict and pleasure loyalty to the system which recognizes minority rights and religious freedom. So they jumped in right away. Nice.

Before we even declared war, they were like, we're in. We're going to be there. So Navajo people start enlisting. They will be in the end about 400 code talkers and then a bunch of other Navajos that were actually just like other parts of the military. They never really would rise up to anything like Pasica colonel, but they were very, very active. So now I'll tell you what the code is. So the code is like a secret code developed in Navajo that was impossible to break.

It wasn't just talking in Navajo. It was coded in Navajo and not written down. So you had to like be able to understand it in a different way. So basically what they did is transmitting codes, as we know, is time consuming. So you have to send the code. Then you have to break the code, figure out what you want to do, and then recode it and then send it back. So that takes a really long time to do.

And there is a man named Philip Johnson. He's a World War I veteran. And he had the idea to use Navajo. So in this case, just like you said, only 30 people at this time outside of the Navajo Nation could speak it at all, like even a little bit. So definitely none of them were Japanese. They did not pick it at all. they tested a Navajo translation just like saying words over the thing and it took 20 seconds because they're just translating so it's just like super easy and they're like okay let's give it a shot major general Clayton B Vogel wanted to enlist 30 Navajo to to make the code and he ended up with 29 so no one remembers where that 30th guy went maybe he quit but they're called the original 29 so real quick okay so they're not just speaking in Navajo they're speaking in a coded language yeah I'm going to tell you about him Okay. Okay. Yeah. So he put out a call. I need 30 young Navajo men. They need to be between the ages of 18 and 32 of the 29. At least two of them lied about their age. They didn't really have birth certificates. So one of them was 15. One of them was 35. But they were, you know, mostly in that age group. They needed to speak fluent Navajo and English, like perfectly. And they were told there's a secret mission that only Navajo can do. We need you to do it. And so they signed up. They said, great. I'll do the secret mystery.

secret mission and they did basic training at camp camp camp pendleton and they were really good at it it was normal for them in the navajo nation to walk like 20 miles a day to do stuff and carry stuff so they're really good at like military marching and things like that the one thing they were not good at was swimming because they're not really swimming people because they live in the desert so they had all had to learn how to swim as well because they're going to be like deployed to iwojima and like have to get off boats so they go through basic training and after that that most people get to go home after basic training, but these guys didn't get to go home.

They stayed at Camp Pendleton. They locked them in a room, kind of. They put them in a room. And so we need you to develop a code that only the 30 of you can understand and that you'd be able to teach other people, knowing that Navajo isn't written down, all of the things. And so what they came up with. So here's what the actual code is.

It is 400 words in the code plus an alphabet, plus some double letters. so words like the Navajo word for iron fish that was a submarine right the Navajo word for turtle that meant tank and that was like you would never be able to put that word whatever it is for tank in in or turtle in Navajo and get the word tank out of it you know like it's not there's it doesn't come from a language that like also they probably didn't have those words either so they probably they had to create the code because yes as part of it too is they had to keep adding to it as they got new things you know like when these guys joined they were given world war one guns with bayonets and then like later you know they get better guns right but yeah there's like new things that they've never heard before so they have to keep adding new words to the code the other part of the code is spelling things out so they had a navajo word for every letter of the english alphabet so for example the navajo word for aunt meant a so if you're spelling out a word you would say like aunt instead of like for a to be able to spell that word but that word like doesn't sound anything like a they also did some double letters for common things so like oh it only worked because they were bilingual it

only worked because they could actually translate that into English from the Navajo way of saying that word yes so in farcey aunt is mocha so someone who were to say that my mind clicks into you're talking about an aunt. Okay, now we've got to take that word that it starts with an M in Farsi and translated to an A. Yes, exactly, exactly. So some of the letters, they had double ones, like E is the most common letter in the English language, and you could, like, potentially crack a code if someone's doing like double E's, like, looking for the different letters.

So they would have some words that had, some letters had two words. So, like, an example that Chester Nez uses in his book is like, they were like, hey, you want to get a beer. Like, they were just kind of joking around. But for beer in Navajo, you could say, bird, eagle, egg, rain. but like in Navajo and then they would like in their heads they like knew it and they'd be like beer you know interesting okay so like that's how they were like and then you're right that they like could translate it immediately in their heads so they didn't have to like write it down or

think about it or whatever they like knew immediately like okay when you say iron fish you mean submarine when you say or you're spelling out this word it just like it happened so fast because they they practice and practiced and drilled and drilled and talked and code to each other and like but they weren't allowed to tell you what they were doing so other Marines would be like what are you guys doing they'd be like oh we're to speak Navajo but they were like perfecting the code so what is a situation

in which you would do the spelling thing as a word as opposed to the word like Guadocanal okay something comes up and you haven't drilled it so you got to spell it okay yeah like Iwo Jima like you'd have to maybe they made a word for it eventually but like they would spell that out or they like spell out the names of people if they needed to

things like that and again it's tonal and nothing is nothing is written down. And so you can picture like today or even like I feel like from World War two movies when I picture someone like doing a code, I picture like a guy in like a signal room getting Morse code, you know, and like writing it down and then like doing it. Also we talked about like Virginia Hall would have her little radio like in an attic in France and like, you know, Morse code over to England as well. But in this case, they would be like on the ground with the Marines. And I feel like we think about Normandy all the time. And I think of like storming a beach,

you know, but they stormed the beaches constantly in like Japan and the islands, the islands around Japan. And like, you would have to jump off your boat, hold your radio above your head. And like the water would be up to your chest and you have like run onto the beach. And there'd be like dead body is sweating by you of someone you were just talking to, you know, and you're like trying to get up there and all those things. So you have to like be able to do it under super intense pressure. Not to go into Old Man Corner here, but this is like a great example

of why our generation is like so soft and weak. Like, we can order food delivery to our house. Like, yeah, anyways. No, I thought about that a lot too, because I was like, we I was like, I know

we give him a lot of shit, but like also, our grandpas were able to climb off boats. with guns and like watch their buddies die like that's not great i biked i biked i biked 1.5 miles to and from my workout studio yesterday and i had to take a nap for like three hours when i got home yeah wildly hard so they took them to the pacific because they needed to um capture the islands of like guato canal iwojima to be able to move up to japan This is, like, right before we drop our bomb as when we're over there as well.

So, also, like, the Pacific Islands, while beautiful, are, like, really fucking humid. There's mosquitoes everywhere. One of the guys talks about how there's, like, giant crabs, like, the ones that ate Amelia Earhart everywhere. They're, like, this awful. And you're always wet, you know, like, everything, you never dry. It's just, like, a whole thing. Yeah.

So they're living through all of that. And they can't tell anybody what they're doing. So in Navajo, like, you never really, like, talk about yourself or, like, gloat. It's not really like part of their culture. But they still, but they were allowed to do none of that. So they couldn't tell anyone about the code, anyone, how what they were doing was really important.

They were just, like, were regular Marines, which also is great. Thank you for service. But also, like, they just weren't allowed to talk about the code. They, two of the original 29 stayed back to continue to teach. So eventually they did teach about 400 different Navajo, the code. But they brought them over. to the island, like Guam, that area,

the first time they tested the code over the actual airwaves, people freaked out on the US side because they thought that the Japanese had it had it like gotten into their airwaves or things. And they had to be like, no, no, no, it's Navajo. And then they had before they did anything,

they had to say like Arizona from like now on. So they like knew that it was them. Like they're starting their own code. I feel like people would crack that earlier, but whatever. And I was like, oh my God, they're such nerds that they don't know what Japanese sounds like and what Navajo sounds like. And then when I was listening to it, I was like, okay, I could see how you could think this might

be Japanese, you know, listening to a little bit in my book. I don't have any examples. I'm not even going to try. But then I was like, oh, I'm listening to this book at 2.5 speed. If I slow it down, it sounds insane. But also if I slow down the English, that sounds insane because it's not my vibe. So the answer is I get why they might have thought it was Japanese. Yeah.

But. And I was like, did they talk fast when they were doing their code? I feel like probably, but you have to be precise, but you also have to be fast. And you're talking about like 18-year-old kids from Wisconsin. Like, they probably aren't going to decipher Japanese from Mandarin from anything. Yeah. So they like the, they also, each of the code talkers, because they were so important because they needed to messages from island to island you know and it had to be unbreakable it had to be able to do it

things that are like there is a sniper anything from there's a sniper on this tower because they were going to these places where the japanese had like dug in miles and miles into the island and they had like literally were like dug into the ground had foxholes they were hiding in trees like there was one time when there was an earthquake and there all of a sudden all these japanese soldiers were falling out of the palm trees on the island they didn't even know they were there you know so like they're just sharing also information with with each other um and they also had bodyguards um for a couple of reasons like probably to make sure they didn't fall into enemy hands you know um but also to keep them safe because they were super important and because every once in a while

another u.s soldier would think that they were Japanese and um try to kill them rough rough yeah so it was that was rough um they were invaluable at guadocanel in Iwo Jima. They also, oh, I said that they, the swimming part, they, also in Navajo, you don't spend time with a dead body. Like, that's not really part of their culture as well. So it was really hard for them. Obviously, it was hard for everybody. But like, you know, literally your buddies are dying, you know, and there's like dead bodies everywhere. And in like the Navajo tradition, if someone dies in your Hogan, which is your house, you never go, you never live there again. No one never lives there again. I kind of get that I don't know where people die then but also you know so that was like a huge

Does that mean you just take when they're like on their last breath you just take them out in the yard right I thought about that yesterday and I don't know the answer about that that's not good either yeah

so um the first so at one point the Japanese were like they figured out somehow that it was Navajo and they captured another Navajo soldier and that guy he survived the war

but he was like I can't crack this code. He was like, I can tell you the words they're saying, but I don't know what it means, you know? Which is why I thought it was, I thought they were literally going to just be speaking in Navajo because the language was so rare, but the fact that they turned into a code as well is like very impressive. Yeah, exactly. They had like learn another language at top of their language. Yeah. Yeah. So they were invaluable in Iwo Jima. The first two days at Iwo Jima, they transmitted 800 messages over two days with no mistakes. So just like,

back and forth, war plans, where are the guys, what are you seeing, what's going on, where usually those things would take, like, an hour to do each message, and they could do it instantly because they're just talking to each other, you know? 13 of the co-talkers were killed in action. Some of them were killed, you know, just by enemy fire because they're just like fighting from foxhole to foxhole. Major Howard Connor, signal officer of the 5th Marine Division at Iwojima, said that we're not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwojima.

We couldn't have done it without them. You also remember Ira Hayes. He was not a Navajo. He was a Pima. But he's the Native American in that famous Iwo Jima picture of them with the flag. Oh, nice. Which, by the way, was staged. I heard that was staged, yeah.

Yeah, I guess like the guy wanted the original flag, so they went and did it again. And I think that man, Ira Hayes, has a pretty sad life after this. But there were, you know, just to say, there were plenty of other Native American people that were in the war as well. So they stayed all the way through the Pacific War until the Japanese surrendered and it was over.

A lot of it, the stuff that I was reading about, like, the end of the war that I think would be interesting to talk about later is like, you know, how they like really believe the Emperor Hirohito was God. And like when he talked and when he actually like said that he was surrendering, people like didn't believe it because they'd never hurt him before.

Right. You know, like this wild stuff and how the Japanese were just like fighting till till the last man. But the war ends and they go home. Some of them stay in the military and have military careers, but a lot of people just go home. And they cannot talk about their code. It's used a little bit in Korea and Vietnam. But they were also like pretty sure they were about to head into another hot war with Russia. So they were like, we have to keep this secret. So they went home and their paper said, this guy was a regular Marine, whatever. Nothing that like this person like was able to

strategically create this code and do these things under this immense pressure and all these things they couldn't tell anyone about it and they didn't they kept it a secret yeah it's like the CIA where like every spy that dies is just like a black star yeah exactly people will never know yeah like what they did so it was kind of hard for them to get jobs um also they obviously encountered tons of racism when they got home so they would like be on their way home in their military uniform and like try to go to a restaurant and they'd get kicked out because it would be like no indians here you know like that was still happening all over um um and then a lot of them also they couldn't get the GI bill because

to help them, like, build a home or go to college because it didn't count on the Navajo Nation. So they were like, oh, you can build a house, but you can't build it there. You know, stuff like that. That, like, made it hard. Wait, so they could build a house. They just couldn't do it because Navajo Nation is a sovereign entity. Yeah.

Okay. Even though they fought for the United States. But it's a sovereign nation. But they fought for the United States. You know what I mean? Like they weren't, they weren't in like the Navajo military. They were in the United States marines. But wouldn't the sovereign nation have to grant exemptions to allow them to build a home there?

No, no, no. They could, like, physically build a home, but the GI Bell is supposed to help them give them money to build a home. But they were trying to build a home on the Navajo Nation's land. Right, but they didn't get that money from the GI Bill. So they could do it. They just didn't get that, like, boost that you would get if you built anywhere else. Okay. Does that make sense?

Yeah, but it's not The money was to build a home in America Yeah, I guess But it's a different Legal entity But they fought for America I don't know, I feel like they should get it But there's probably a case for them not getting it

That's like me trying to get money To build a house in Costa Rica And it's like, no, no, no, like this is the GI Bill Like it's But after you've risked your life for the Costa Rican army and they gave everybody else money. I don't know.

I made it harder for them. Okay. We'll stick with that. Sure. Also, a lot of them had PTSD, but they couldn't talk about it, obviously, which is like probably everyone

who came home from war ever. There's a lot of PTSD. They would do, a lot of them did ceremonies at home where they would have like, it's like a several day long ceremony where you try to like get the bad thoughts out of you and like people come

to your house and you're working it together. So a lot of them just did that because they weren't able to talk about what they had done, but they knew that they had like, you know, obviously they had like terrible dreams all the time because they were in war. Chester and I was one of the guy whose book I read, he went to school, art school, got married and he had some like personal trouble, some of his kids passed away early. But anyway, he lived his life.

And a lot of them just kind of went off and lived regular lives. In 1968, it finally became declassified. So they finally were like, we're not going to use a code anymore. So they were able to talk about what they did. did and their families were like shocked that they had done this like they didn't know that they had created this code and how important it had been and um chester nez's dad was so alive which is nice he got to know what what happened um people like knew that they had done stuff they didn't know how exciting it was and how important it was um a lot of they have a lot of stuff dedicated to the navajo code talkers

now in ic 82 regan declared august 14th as national navajo co talker day there's a bunch of ceremonies and celebrations. There's a brown statue of them at the Navajo Nations Veterans Memorial in Window Rock, Arizona. In 2001, the original 29 Navajo co-talkers were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and all of the rest of them, so the other 300 and such, were rewarded the received the silver medal. On July 26, 2001, George Bush gave gold medals to four of the five remaining co-talkers so a lot of them had passed away but there were five left the fifth one was too sick to make it but they got that so they go around you know i think they're all they're all dead by now but they went around talking about what they had done and how proud they were at especially i think

underneath the thing that was like the american government as much as possible to erase me speaking this language and then it became very important you know it's like kind of their their main thing um chester nez talks about in in the book reading he was one of the original 29. He talks about blessing himself. He brought corn Paul into the beaches and Guadal to bless himself and they would pray to the Catholic God and all the old gods

just to be able to like help protect their country, meaning the United States and like that land and then also like their friends and family. And then I have a prayer that they would say a lot of them would repeat when they were in battle.

This prayer is the it's in English and so just to know it's probably more beautiful in Navajo, but it is called walk in beauty prayer. This is a short version, but it's still pretty long. But this is what a lot of them would say to each other as they were trying to psych themselves up to do this. In beauty, may I walk, all day long, may I walk.

Through the returning seasons, may I walk. Beautifully will I possess again, beautifully birds, beautifully joyful birds. On the trail marked with pollen, may I walk. With grasshoppers about my feet, may I walk. With dew about my feet. May I walk with beauty, may I walk. With beauty before me, may I walk.

With beauty behind me, may I walk. With beauty above me, may I walk. With beauty above me, may I walk. With beauty all around me, may I walk. In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk. An old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk. My words will be beautiful. So they would say that to each other to get them through. They should have augmented that to be something along lines of,

in the swamps covered in mosquitoes bandwalk Exactly Keeping where they ended up It was a totally different Alien environment But yeah

I feel like someday I'll watch Wind Talkers The Nick Cage movie We got come on We gotta support our boy Nick We do So we can get out He can buy some more castles

And such But yeah Isn't that cool I don't know I never knew that So I only knew The Nick Cage movie and I never watched that.

So I never, yeah, I never actually knew anything about this. We learned a lot in school about, like, the Native American cultures in Texas. I forgot who they are now. I mean, I don't retain information at all. But you know what was like, I feel like every American kid did report, for instance, to do it on the Shoshone, you know. We did, we did diaramas. We did a lot of diaramas.

I remember wigwams were a big part of my youth. Exactly, exactly. I feel like the Navajo I feel in Infinity for because I think that was my third grade project. Who were the ones in Texas? I don't know. There's probably a fair amount of them. I mean, obviously, Texas is huge.

Like, you could find out, like, what native land is Austin. So, yeah, like, Austin is on, it says traditional various groups. There's, like, the Tonkawa live in central Texas and the Comanche and Apache move through the area. That's what UT says. Yeah, we got Comanche, Apache, Cato, Karenkawa, Tonkawa, Wichita.

Well, Wichita is the Native American world. Mm-hmm. At a Kappa. There's a lot. Yeah. No, absolutely. Like, um. It's,

a lot and I'm sure also like, you know, I think that the history is simplified, you know, like because we put them into a bucket, like all the Navajo, but they weren't all the exact same until we like push them all in the same direction, you know, because it was just like small groups and they probably changed a bunch. Yeah, eventually homogeneality is a component of all this stuff, right? Well, you called that called a simulation of modern terms, but Sweet. No, that was very informative. Did not know that, and now I do.

Yeah, no, you do. Super cool. I feel like it's something that, like, my dad used to always talk about getting a second job as a Navajo talker. So I feel like I've heard about it a lot, because my dad just always brings it up, like, my whole life. And, like, without knowing a lot of details, he just talked about it a lot.

I don't know why. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Like, despite the colonization. aspect of most things. I think Texas is unique in a lot of ways, and I think one of the ways is unique is that you don't go very far without being reminded of like

the Native American culture here. California, I think, is very similar as well. Yeah. Like, I'm thinking about like, I'm looking at some of these paintings and these artworks that captured Native American life, and I'm like, I see these everywhere I go, like bars, restaurants,

hotels. It is ubiquitous. this here. Yeah. Which is good. Yeah, it's good. I did go to this one store. It's called Pinto Ranch, Taylor, and they had, they saw a lot of, like, higher and stuff

that I can't afford. And one of the stuff they had was this, like, beautiful, beautiful statue. It was kind of abstract, but it was mostly of, like, a Native American chief. And it was just, like, position in the middle of the store. I was like, wow, that's a really, like, that's cool. like i mean it looked very unique it didn't look like a typical statue of a person it was like he was turning from feathers into a chieftain with like the headdress on and everything it was really really interesting then i looked down and it was for sale for 120,000 dollars i was like i gotta get the

fuck out of here um i also in the novel that i read it was they said and i'm sure this is true that you know they would call all of the navajo chief they would like nickname that like hey chief and like one of the guys got sick of it he goes hey mr president and they were like okay we get it is that why we say chief to people now yeah i don't think it's like not racist i think it was like you would just say that to like the one native person you knew and you're like troop interesting okay um but yeah to like this up to me that which is funny um yeah sweet um anything else to read off where we sign off um yes once again thank you to Nadine and Juan for joining our Patreon.

And then I also had another thing I wanted to add from last week. I forgot to tell you that, you know, how I said that Grafton, New Hampshire with the Libertarians was kind of like the Anabaptist going to Munster. Yeah. I think that I forgot to tell you is that before the Libertarians went to Grafton, the Mooney's went to Grafton. Did you know who the Moonies are? No.

So there's this, like, church, they call themselves a unification church, which is like a part of it's a cult, essentially. But essentially, it is a man. named a Korean man named Sun Mung Moon. He's not alive anymore, but he would like obviously take everybody's money and like they would have to like give up all other things

and like, you know, do everything for this man. And they are famous for doing these like mass weddings if they ever look them up. It's like 200 people getting married at the same time and they just like, I watched a documentary about it a long time ago, but it was like someone was like, oh yeah, I'm going to England to meet my husband. Like they never met.

They just like pair people up and have them to get married in these mass mass weddings. so it was just like another reason that grafting for somehow like attracts these people who want to like live on the fringes and do different things i remember this i remember when i was a kid and the news covered these mass weddings i never knew there was more of a story behind it but as with everything there is while moons was sentenced to federal prison and damer okay this guy sounds like it was pretty bad yeah i don't think yeah but that is it sweet thank you Write to us. Tell us what you think. At Dovenafelpod at Gmail.com on all the socials at Doobinafel pot. And we'll join you again in a week. Thank you, Taylor.

Cool. Thank you.