Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Arizona: The Navajo Code Talkers with Lindsay Sherbondy

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

In today’s episode, Sharon is joined by artist, designer, and mom, Lindsay Sherbondy. Together, they talk about the Navajo Nation’s WWII Code Talkers. This elite group of men created and used a code used for relaying information between military units during World War II. The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered, and the code talkers were instrumental in the victories of several battles during the war. They returned as unsung heroes because of the classified nature of their mission, living with their wartime secrets for more than 25 years before receiving official recognition by the U.S. government. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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we all love and enjoy every day. With 3,200 dairy farming families across Ontario sharing our love for milk, there's love in every glass. Dairy Farmers of Ontario, from our families to your table, everybody milk. Visit milk.org to learn more. Hello friends, welcome. Welcome. Oh, my goodness. I have my friend who I jokingly say that her name is Lindsay Letters. That's not her real last name, but her account is Lindsay Letters. So I think of her as Lindsay Letters in my mind. She agreed to let me call her Lindsay Letters, and she's just going to call me Sharon Say-So. Like, that's my last name. So, oh my goodness.

Y'all have got to hear this conversation about something remarkable from the state of Arizona. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am so excited to have you here today, Lindsay. It's been a long time coming. I'm such a huge fan. I've been a fan of yours for many years. We will out-fan you.

My whole team, my best friends, our squad, we're just like the biggest supporters of you. We like need Sharon says so cheer uniforms. So tell everybody if they're not already following Lindsay Letters, which everybody thinks is your real last name and it's not, but I think it's fun to call you Lindsay Letters. Tell everybody what you do. So I'm an artist. I am a graphic designer by trade, but I'm also a painter and a lettering artist. And I sell my artwork online at lindsayletters.co. I've been doing it for about 10 years in that regard. And before that,

I did wedding invitations, but that seems like a hundred years ago. That's my, that's one of my day jobs. My other day job is I'm a mom and I get to communicate with people over the internet through Instagram, mostly, although I'm like a grandma on the, on the Instagram. I don't understand this new way of life, but the dancing and the pointing to things and stuff. But I like to joke that it's a long running joke that when I went on the daily show with Trevor, Trevor Noah, he told me I was not a thirst trap. And I was like, oh, thank you. I'll take that as a compliment. I try to have a little more substance to offer. Like, this is not just me on a tropical beach in a bikini. That's not my count. Yes. Thank you.

I'm not a thirst correct. Well, I mean, I don't know. We can't all be thirst traps. Not everybody can. No, we can't. I was telling you earlier that I woke up in the hospital today because my daughter Ava is there. She is medically complex and she's been in the hospital for a while. And I was telling the nurses that I had a podcast interview today and they were like, ah, as long as it's not on video. And I thought like, it's not, but what if it was? So I clearly am not a thirst trap either. But I do. I do love the community that we have through my business and through our family. It's just been like, it's such a sweet space, but our Instagram feed is a total mess of like personal life and then there's like here's some artwork. It's like deeply personal. I'm crying in the car. And then it's like also art, like also pretty things, but that's life, right? That's right. I, I, I personally enjoy it. I love seeing that mixture of things. I have a fun story that I want to share with you. So, okay. We're

going to go back in time, back to, you know, like world war II, actually, we're going to go even back farther than that. And we're going to talk a little bit about the Navajo Nation in Arizona. So have you traveled in like Arizona, Utah, Colorado, like New Mexico, like that Four Corners area? So I lived in Arizona for a while, just for a year. Yeah. Ava was too. I grew up around, well, in Rockford, outside of the Chicago area, by a couple hours. And I've been like a Midwest girl and never really traveled much. But when we moved to Arizona, I, we drove and I remember being, feeling so grateful for the drive to kind of like have just woken up and been like, or gotten on a plane. And now you live in Arizona, just everything about it felt so different than my Midwest self, but to like drive across country and to see the landscape

change before my eyes almost felt like my brain more could reconcile like how I got there. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. It does. It, it didn't just, it wasn't magical transportation. Yeah. So driving through New Mexico is really where like, I couldn't believe it, the colors and just like, I loved it. And I mean, Arizona, we just were totally smitten, the quirkiest, funnest place for us. I think you either love it or you don't. Have you spent time there? Yeah. My husband grew up in Northern Arizona, up in the mountains. And I've been to Arizona a number of times and it is such a unique place. Of course I grew up and live in Minnesota. And so I'm used

to my like trees and water and lakes and rocks. And so it does seem so you're like, what is this now? This is a cactus. You know, like it, it just seems like, look at that. Like almost gimmicky, like cactuses in real life. Yeah. Like this Disneyland version of cactus? No, it's real? Oh, yeah, it is. It's such a different place. But I actually couldn't believe Northern Arizona how foresty it was.

Oh, yes. Very much so. Mountains, forest, they get four seasons. They get snow in the winter. It's definitely a misconception that Arizona is all just desert. Going back to the Navajo Nation, which is the largest Native American reservation in the United States. Geographically, the Navajo Nation reservation is larger than the state of West Virginia. So that just to give you a little bit of context about how large of a space that we're

talking about. And again, some of it encompasses those different states, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico. It's not just solidly within one state. And during the era of World War II, there were roughly 50,000 Navajo tribe members. Okay. Sorry. So when you say Navajo nation, I'm picturing a map and then it's overlapping these other spaces. So when you say Navajo nation, what defines that? It's a reservation. It's a whole reservation. Yes. It's a geographical design. That's gigantic. That's gigantic. Bigger than West Virginia. Yeah. I didn't know if you were just describing the people group that inhabit that or if it was specifically a reservation, but yeah, that's huge. Yes. It's a reservation. And of course,

the Navajo are a people group and they are a very ancient people group, like many indigenous people to the United States. They have documented history going back many thousands of years. In fact, there are places in New Mexico that have ruins older than the Egyptian pyramids. Wow. That's crazy. Isn't that crazy? We always think about America being kind of a young country. We've only been here a few hundred years. And sure, the Europeans have only been here for a few hundred years, but indigenous people have inhabited North America, particularly the southwestern portion of the United States for many thousands of years. unique in the context of this story is that they have a unique language and they have a large group of tribe members. So during the 1800s, the United States, I mean, frankly, throughout the United States' history, it treated the indigenous people of North America very poorly, right? This

is extremely well documented. This is not a secret that so many indigenous people were just wiped off the map for a variety of reasons, including contagious illness to which they had no immunity, including wars in which Europeans wanted to kick indigenous people off of the land that they wanted, including military crusades led by people like Andrew Jackson, who was a military general before he became the United States president, in which the entire southeastern portion of the United States was subject to the Indian Removal Act, in which it was basically saying, all of y'all need to get off of your ancestral lands. And in many cases have to walk through what is now known

historically as the Trail of Tears, walk thousands of miles to the new place that they were designated to live, which is Indian country and what is mostly Oklahoma now. But it also, the United States set up this system of reservations, right, in which certain portions of land would be reserved to indigenous people and the rest would be fair game to other people who wanted to settle it. And very often those reservations were land that was not something that other people wanted to farm. America, the idea that we removed children from their families and sent them to boarding schools in the effort to assimilate them into European culture. They had to cut their hair, stop speaking the language, dress according to European standards, convert to Christianity. So the Navajo Nation was very unique in that it was very large.

When I say it was like 50,000 people, that was large by the 1940s. It was a large group of indigenous people living together, and they had a common language amongst themselves. In the era of World War II, the 1940s, there were about 540 Navajo tribe members who served as Marines during World War II. But the reason I bring this up is there was this man in 1942. His name is Philip Johnston, and he was the son of missionaries. And he grew up on the Navajo reservation. He came up with an idea after reading a newspaper article about Native American soldiers in World War II. States military with this idea that the United States could use indigenous languages to North America as a way to communicate in the United States military in an unbreakable code. Have you

heard of the Navajo Code Talker program? No. Okay, so that's what I want to talk about is the Navajo Code Talkers. And of the over 500 members of the Navajo Nation that served in the military, about 400 of them during World War II were involved in the Code Talker program. So this is what a historian of this program had to say. He says in the early part of World War II, the enemy, which of course were Axis powers, the enemy was breaking every military code that was being used in the Pacific. This created a huge problem for strategizing against the enemies. So of course, today we're like, well, who is listening in? You know, like we're so used to our text communications, right making this up. You couldn't just say these things. You're obviously a natural. I'm a natural at communicating via marine radio, marine radio.

But you couldn't just say those things. It had to be said in code, right? So that your enemies could not understand what it is that you were trying to communicate. Well, the problem was that the enemy was excellent at breaking codes. They were breaking every code the United States military came up with, and that put us in a very, very bad position militarily. If you can understand what your enemy is going to do in advance because you broke the code they were using to communicate then that puts you at a vulnerable state right i've seen a movie about this about a break i mean not the navajo code talkers but about this i feel like i'm an expert is what i'm saying i've watched a break of code because there was a movie i saw some time

ago and i can't remember but i can visualize what you're saying. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And there are people who have a very specific skillset, like their mind works in such a way that it allows them to see patterns and to do this type of work. Like a beautiful mind. Yes. Yes. So Johnston goes to the naval office in Los Angeles to propose his program. And they were like, well, that is interesting. Why don't you go talk to this other person in San Diego? He gets referred to the Major Jones's office at Camp Elliott in San Diego. And in this proposal, I mean, like he wrote a proposal, he stressed that the Navajo people's extremely unique and unwritten language and their isolated geographic location made it a perfect fit to use in code. Why? Because nobody who lived overseas, nobody in Japan, nobody in Germany spoke Navajo. It was not a language you could learn unless you were a native speaker.

There was no Navajo book because it was an unwritten language. It is unique to the indigenous people of North America, and it is unwritten. And so his idea was this would be perfect for military code. Additionally, because of the United States' history of sending Native children to boarding schools, there was a growing number of people on the Navajo Reservation who could speak Navajo fluently, but who could also speak English fluently. So the major that Johnston gets referred to is very skeptical. He's like, you know, it seemed, it seemed like a weird idea. He didn't have any familiarity with this until Johnston invites him to like, let's just test it. We have guys here

that can, you know, that, that speak Navajo, let's try it out. And they brought in four Navajo speakers and asked them to demonstrate sending and receiving six messages that were coded in the Navajo language. And the major after that was convinced. And they began to develop a program that would codify the Navajo code talking program that they made a point of never, ever, ever writing down. None of this was ever written down so that in the event that somebody who worked with this program or somebody was serving on a naval vessel, that even if they were captured by the enemy, there would not be a book that they could, or a piece of paper that they could pick up and use it to break the code. So it feels like it had to be such a very specific time in history because it feels like

if they had been teaching this for any longer, there would have been a textbook created for it. Yeah. Somebody would have written it down somewhere. Eventually. Right. That's right. And so, sorry, Johnson was not Navajo. He was a son of a missionary.

That's right. He was. That's right. But the generosity of the Navajo serving in our U.S. military were like, yes, we'll help you with this. To me, that is incredible. Like my personality is like, did they ask for permission? Like did they? And they were just so willing.

Can you just take our language? Yeah. Like you can be over. I would have been like, let's. I don't know. That is just incredibly generous and so cool. And so, yeah, very specific to that time period. Yes.

Very much so. Any earlier, it wouldn't have worked. Any later, it wouldn't have worked. So true. So true. What a unique moment in history. You're absolutely right. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack.

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Shop great deals on Amazon. Not only did they have some members of the military who were Navajo speakers, they went and recruited more at the reservation. And in May of 1942, 29 Navajo men arrived in San Diego to participate in this program, to receive the linguistics training that they needed, not because they needed to learn how to speak Navajo, but because they needed to understand about military codes in general. And they began to set up a radio code program that was made up of words that were selected from the Navajo language and then applied to military phrases. So it initially featured 211 terms that would be used. And it later expanded to over 400 terms.

Now, of course, the Navajo language doesn't have any words that mean things about ships. Missile? Right, exactly. Or words that they would have never had to use before in a good way. Right, Correct. Even again, if you're thinking about people that are indigenous to the American Southwest, they don't have a large vocabulary related to water, ships, different types of ships, aircraft carriers, you know, all of these things. They did not have, you know, a one for one, what's the Navajo word for aircraft carrier, right? Like that's not a thing. So they needed to develop

a specific set of codes that made sense to the native speakers. They began to try to think of ways that they could make it make sense in Navajo. So for example, a ship, the Navajo words that they used for the word ship meant sea force, like ocean force. Something related to a patrol plane was the Navajo word for crow. So again, that is the general idea. And they had to learn, there's this like 17 page booklet of how codes work. And so they had to become very familiar with how codes work because they couldn't just go on the radio and begin speaking fluent Navajo. to the mostly European Americans who are receiving the messages, right? So that's the other thing is that other people had to learn what the code was. So they took Navajo words and assigned them English letters so that things could be spelled out. You could spell things using Navajo words. So for example, we think about like acrostics of like, Lindsay is lovely, intelligent, et cetera. Like the letters of your name, you will have a

word for each of those things. They did that with Navajo words and they assigned Navajo words, English letters so that people could spell things in English using Navajo words. And again, nobody speaks Navajo. A huge whiteboard for this program. Yes, yes, yes. That program eventually expanded. They eventually created 44 different sounds that had different Navajo words. And during the development of this Code Talkers program, the Marine officials were stunned at how quickly Navajo Marines could transmit, receive, and decode messages from other Code Talkers, much faster than receiving a coded message that they had developed in English, because it was almost like having a one-to-one conversation for native Navajo speakers.

That's amazing. So no other form of military code before or since has ever been as fast or as accurate. And because it was so successful, they then began recruiting other men. This program eventually swelled to over 400 men. men. This program eventually swelled to over 400 men. And so out in the field during World War II, half of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers were shipped overseas to join the U.S. Marines who were really prepping the first offensive move in the Pacific, which is at Guadalcanal. And they were the first sort of place in the field to demonstrate that their code could be successful. They were sort of assigned in pairs to a military unit and one person would operate

the portable radio while the other person would relay and receive messages in the native language and then translate it to English so that the other people on the ship could understand. And this was extraordinarily difficult because Japanese soldiers would purposely target officers. They would target medics. They would target radio men because those were integral to the functioning of the ship. So code talkers had to keep moving as they translated messages. You could not just be like, I'm going to sit here in this office and work on this. Pull up and see the coffee shop. That's right.

You had to continually keep moving so that you would be very difficult to target. And they were literally translating code while moving through Pacific jungles. Is that not incredible? I can't compute that. It's not, there's no, anything else in my life that would make me no no there is no like i don't understand it just in their minds is there that's right there's nothing written down they did all of this in their minds without writing anything down because writing it down is what part of what made it dangerous. Writing it down is what would make it breakable. So they're walking through jungles, translating code on behalf of the United States military.

Yeah. Mind blowing. There's nothing else that's mind blowing. Isn't that so cool? So they had to do all of this in real time in their minds, like as it's happening in their minds. And here's what one of them said about, you know, having worked on this project, we acted as coding machines, transmitting messages that would have taken a couple of hours in just a couple of minutes. Navajo code talkers who were part of the Marine Corps landed on the beach in Iwo Jima on February 19th of 1945. One of the code talkers was in the first wave of attacks and five more would later follow as the invasion sort of progressed.

And they're doing this while being shot at, right? Like they're facing mortar rounds. They're doing all of this absorbing and translating of these coded messages. I mean, I'm like, I have to write down my three things I'm getting at target like that. Right. Like that. Right. I'm just picturing any of the war movies I've seen and like traversing that jungle and then just. Yes, that's right. And during the course of this assault on Iwo Jima, Kotakor sent and received 800 coded messages. And there were zero mistakes during that. Say that again?

Yeah, right? Zero mistakes. 800 messages while they are carrying out an invasion and being shot at. Is that not incredible? That's incredible. And just to think, I hope that they felt just such a sense of pride to that the Navajo nation got to have offered this language as such a service and then to be able to have just like done it. You know, I'm such a, my friends listening to this are probably like, I like credit and I like to be able to celebrate of like a win and like, just to be like, look what, like we offered this thing and it worked and we did it. We did such a good job, but then to also

be doing that under extreme stress, like I don't conditions. How do you get trained for that? Because I would imagine being in the, like in the figure it out part of the language and the code and all of that would be like, yeah, you're writing it down, you know, what workbooking it with all these people in the room, but to be practicing it, deciphering it in a jungle under extreme, like not pressure, but like you might die. You might die. You could have just lost a buddy a second ago. I can't like, and not just that, like we're talking about one man was able to do this, but, but like a hundred, yeah. That feels unworldly to me. That's, isn't that incredible? Yes.

So the Navajo code is the only spoken military code to have never been deciphered. And I think that is just like, that is just something that is so, so special. But here's the other thing. We continue to use Navajo code talkers during the Korean War and up into the beginning of the Vietnam War, but it was completely classified. Of course, you could not tell a soul that there were Navajo code talkers. The people needed to not know about that because if they knew they were Navajo, then they could try to figure out something. They could, you know, kidnap somebody or, you know, they might have had tools to be able to

decipher it, but they did not know that they were Navajo. And so this was 100% classified. People who participated in it could not even tell their families that this is what they did. One of them said, when we got out and were discharged, they told us this thing that you guys did is going to be a secret. And when you get home, you don't talk about what you did. And they were not allowed to discuss it for over 25 years. The American public didn't know their families were not allowed to know they were not allowed to go home and be like, I feel amazing that I was able to participate in this way. And it was not until the 1980s when Ronald Reagan issued a certificate of recognition to the Code Talkers and proclaimed August 14th as Navajo Code Talkers Day. It was not until the 1980s that the American public became aware that this was even a thing. And so then in 2014, Arizona passed legislation declaring that every August 14th is

Navajo Code Talkers Day in Arizona. And in the 1990s, they got an exhibit at the Pentagon and they were honored for their contributions to the defense of the United States. The display had like photographs and equipment and portions of the code and a small explanation of how the code worked. So was it just unnecessary? I guess this could be a dumb question, but like, why do we know about it now? Why is it just the technology made this relevant? We don't need the same kind of radio communications because we have satellites now. Yeah. And so since that was in the forties, I mean, that population of people that actually participated is, you know, older and that's right. right well talk about delayed gratification in that regard yes yes in 2001 all 29 of the original Navajo Code Talkers were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and there are four that are still alive and their names are Thomas Begay, John Kinsel, Samuel Sandoval, and Peter McDonald. They're all over 90 years old. One of them gave an interview in 2021. Peter McDonald did. And he said, what Navajo code word do I want our Navajo young people to never forget? Nihima.

And I hope I'm saying that correctly. Which means our mother. Which is the code word that we used for America. Isn't that amazing? I mean, we're just like misty-eyed. Both of us. But better people than I think I could be in that. I mean, I guess there's no way to know, but they gave their actual and, you know, they had their, their actual lives and what they're had,

you know, after having so much taken from them, but they're that to offer your language, I can only imagine how personal that is and that they like, I don't know, did that for us. I love what you just said too, that they gave what they had. They weren't that, you know, that what they had was incredibly valuable and it might have seemed like nothing. Like I grew up speaking this way. Like this is not, I didn didn't make it up but it's what they had and what they had was after giving so much that's right yes or fun little fact which was in 1999 Hasbro released like a G.I. Joe figurine that was of a U.S. military Navajo code talker that's great and it said said seven phrases in both Navajo code and English. And they're out of,

you know, they don't make them anymore, but you can find them on eBay and things like that. Oh, I mean, we should have like bought those before this podcast. That's right. That's right. Oh, Lindsay, this was so fun. It was so fun to share this with you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Well, thank you. And I am like, I It was so fun to share this with you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Well, thank you. And I am like, I really am so blessed to hear this story. I'm like dumbfounded by it. It's crazy to me. It's going to stick with me and probably a lot of most of your listeners for a long time. But I was telling you before this aired that I just, one of the reasons my team and my friends love you so much is because you take what you have and you offer it for good. And that's, you know, one of the reasons why you have such

good developed community of people that love you and love what you're doing. Like, that's just something that you, you practice. And I think in a world where so much stuff is wrong, you just have done it before people were paying attention, even that you're like, this is what I have to offer and I'm going to use it. And then other people are like, okay, well, this is what I have to offer, even if it's small and just to watch that play out. So I think it's such a cool story for you to share because you're already doing that.

And that's why we love you. Thank you. Tell everybody where to find you because I want people to see your beautiful artwork. Thank you. Well, so it's sold at lindsayletters.co and of course I'm biased, but it's just a fun shopping experience. One of the things I'm really passionate about is just how to make shopping on the, on the internet's feel like, like funner and more personal. So you can, you pick out art and then you get to customize it the way that you like it. And we love getting to see it in everybody's homes and how they can make it their own. So it's paintings and lettering

and you can find it at lindsayletters.co and we have a code and it's Sharon says, so exciting. I know we thought really hard about how to make that. So unique. And it will get you 15% off. So 15% off for your listeners. So we'd love for people to pop in and check it out and hope that they love it. And thank you again for having me. Oh, this is truly a pleasure. Thank you, Lindsay. Thanks on behalf of all the people that know me. They're all, you know, tell Sharon thanks.

Thanks for letting you come on. We'll talk soon. Okay. Thanks, Sharon. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend?

All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time. Hey Torontonians, recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, Thank you.