Code talker Code talkers were people who used obscure languages as a means of secret communication during wartime . The term is now usually associated with the United States soldiers during the world war s who used their knowledge of Native - American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages . In particular , there were approximately 400 - 500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages . Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed code s built upon their native languages . Their service improved communications in terms of speed of encryption at both ends in front line operations during World War II . The name " code talkers " is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater . Code talking , however , was pioneered by Choctaw Indians serving in the U . S . Army during World War I . These soldiers are referred to as Choctaw code talkers . Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II , including Cherokee , Choctaw , Lakota Meskwaki , and Comanche soldiers . Soldiers of Basque ancestry were used for code talking by the U . S . Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating . Cherokee code talkers . The first known use of Native Americans in the American military to transmit messages under fire was a group of Cherokee troops utilized by the American 30th Infantry Division serving alongside the British during the Second Battle of the Somme . According to the Division Signal Officer , this took place in September 1918 . Their unit was under British command at the time . Choctaw code talkers . In the days of World War I , company commander Captain Lawrence of the U . S . Army overheard Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb conversing in the Choctaw language . He found eight Choctaw men in the battalion . Eventually , fourteen Choctaw men in the Army ' s 36th Infantry Division trained to use their language in code . They helped the American Expeditionary Forces win several key battles in the Meuse - Argonne Offensive in France , during the final big German push of the war . Within 24 hours after the Choctaw language was pressed into service , the tide of the battle had turned . In less than 72 hours the Germans were retreating and the Allies were in full attack . These soldiers are now known as the Choctaw code talkers . Comanche code talkers . Adolf Hitler knew about the successful use of code talkers during World War I . He sent a team of some thirty anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II . However , it proved too difficult for them to learn the many languages and dialect s that existed . Because of Nazi German anthropologists ' attempts to learn the languages , the U . S . Army did not implement a large - scale code talker program in the European Theater . Fourteen Comanche code talkers took part in the Invasion of Normandy , and continued to serve in the 4th Infantry Division during further European operations . Comanches of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of over 100 code terms using words or phrases in their own language . Using a substitution method similar to the Navajo , the Comanche code word for tank was " turtle " , bomber was " pregnant airplane " , machine gun was " sewing machine " and Adolf Hitler became " crazy white man " . Two Comanche code - talkers were assigned to each regiment , the rest to 4th Infantry Division headquarters . Shortly after landing on Utah Beach on June 6 , 1944 , the Comanches began transmitting messages . Some were wounded but none killed . In 1989 , the French government awarded the Comanche code - talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit . On November 30 , 1999 , the United States Department of Defense presented Charles Chibitty with the Knowlton Award . Meskwaki code talkers . Meskwaki men used their language against the Germans in North Africa . Twenty - seven Meskwaki , then 16 % of Iowa ' s Meskwaki population , enlisted in the U . S . Army together in January 1941 . Basque code talkers . Captain Frank D . Carranza conceived the idea of using the Basque language for codes in May 1942 upon meeting about 60 U . S . Marines of Basque ancestry in a San Francisco camp . His superiors were wary . There were 35 Basque Jesuits in Hiroshima , led by Pedro Arrupe . In China and the Philippines , there was a colony of Basque jai alai players and there were Basque supporters of Falange in Asia . The American Basque code talkers were kept from these theaters ; they were initially used in tests and in transmitting logistic information for Hawaii and Australia . On August 1 , 1942 , Lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre , Fernández Bakaicoa and Juanna received a Basque - coded message from San Diego for Admiral Chester Nimitz warning him of the upcoming Operation Apple to remove the Japanese from the Solomon Islands . They also translated the start date , August 7 , for the attack on Guadalcanal . As the war extended over the Pacific , there was a shortage of Basque speakers and the parallel Navajo program came to be preferred . Navajo code talkers . Philip Johnston , a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles , proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II . Johnston , a World War I veteran , was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajos , and was one of the few non - Navajos who spoke their language fluently . Because Navajo has a complex grammar , it is not nearly mutually intelligible enough with even its closest relatives within the Na - Dene family to provide meaningful information , and was at this time an unwritten language , Johnston saw Navajo as answering the military requirement for an undecipherable code . Navajo was spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest , and its syntax and tonal qualities , not to mention dialects , made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training . One estimate indicates that at the outbreak of World War II fewer than 30 non - Navajos could understand the language . Early in 1942 , Johnston met with Major General Clayton B . Vogel , the commanding general of Amphibious Corps , Pacific Fleet , and his staff . Johnston staged tests under simulated combat conditions which demonstrated that Navajos could encode , transmit , and decode a three - line English message in 20 seconds , versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time . The idea was accepted , with Vogel recommending that the Marines recruit 200 Navajos . The first 29 Navajo recruits attended boot camp in May 1942 . This first group then created the Navajo code at Camp Pendleton , Oceanside , California . The Navajo code was formally developed and modeled on the Joint Army / Navy Phonetic Alphabet that uses agreed - upon English words to represent letters . As it was determined that phonetically spelling out all military terms letter by letter into words — while in combat — would be too time consuming , some terms , concepts , tactics and instruments of modern warfare were given uniquely formal descriptive nomenclatures in Navajo ( the word for " potato " being used to refer to a hand grenade , or " turtle " to a tank , for example ) . Several of these portmanteau s ( such as gofasters referring to running shoes , ink sticks for pens ) entered Marine corps vocabulary and are commonly used today to refer to the appropriate objects . A codebook was developed to teach the many relevant words and concepts to new initiates . The text was for classroom purposes only , and was never to be taken into the field . The code talkers memorized all these variations and practiced their rapid use under stressful conditions during training . Uninitiated Navajo speakers would have no idea what the code talkers ' messages meant ; they would hear only truncated and disjointed strings of individual , unrelated nouns and verbs . The Navajo code talkers were commended for their skill , speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war . At the Battle of Iwo Jima , Major Howard Connor , 5th Marine Division signal officer , had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle . These six sent and received over 800 messages , all without error . Connor later stated , " Were it not for the Navajos , the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima . " As the war progressed , additional code words were added on and incorporated program - wide . In other instances , informal short - cut code word s were devised for a particular campaign and not disseminated beyond the area of operation . To ensure a consistent use of code terminologies throughout the Pacific Theater , representative code talkers of each of the U . S . Marine divisions met in Hawaii to discuss shortcomings in the code , incorporate new terms into the system , and update their codebook s . These representatives in turn trained other code talkers who could not attend the meeting . For example , the Navajo word for buzzard , , was used for bomber , while the code word used for submarine , , meant iron fish in Navajo . The deployment of the Navajo code talkers continued through the Korean War and after , until it was ended early in the Vietnam War . Cryptographic properties . Non - speakers would find it extremely difficult to accurately distinguish unfamiliar sounds used in these languages . Additionally , a speaker who has acquired a language during their childhood sounds distinctly different from a person who acquired the same language in later life , thus reducing the chance of successful impostors sending false messages . Finally , the additional layer of an alphabet cypher was added to prevent interception by native speakers not trained as code talkers , in the event of their capture by the Japanese . A similar system employing Welsh was used by British forces , but not to any great extent during World War II . Welsh was used more recently in the Balkan peace - keeping efforts for non - vital messages . Navajo was an attractive choice for code use because few people outside the Navajo themselves had ever learned to speak the language . Virtually no books in Navajo had ever been published . Outside of the language itself , the Navajo spoken code was not very complex by cryptographic standards and would likely have been broken if a native speaker and trained cryptographers worked together effectively . The Japanese had an opportunity to attempt this when they captured Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines in 1942 during the Bataan Death March . Kieyoomia , a Navajo sergeant in the U . S . Army , but not a code talker , was ordered to interpret the radio messages later in the war . However , since Kieyoomia had not participated in the code training , the messages made no sense to him . When he reported that he could not understand the messages , his captors tortured him . Given the simplicity of the alphabet code involved , it is probable that the code could have been broken easily if Kieyoomia ' s knowledge of the language had been exploited more effectively by Japanese cryptographers . The Japanese Imperial Army and Navy never cracked the spoken code . Post - war recognition . The code talkers received no recognition until the declassification of the operation in 1968 . In 1982 , the code talkers were given a Certificate of Recognition by U . S . President Ronald Reagan , who also named August 14 , 1982 " Navajo Code Talkers Day " . On December 21 , 2000 the U . S . Congress passed , and President Bill Clinton signed , Public Law 106 - 554 , 114 Statute 2763 , which awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the original twenty - nine World War II Navajo code talkers , and Silver Medals to each person who qualified as a Navajo code talker ( approximately 300 ) . In July 2001 , U . S . President George W . Bush personally presented the Medal to four surviving original code talkers ( the fifth living original code talker was not able to attend ) at a ceremony held in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington , DC . Gold medals were presented to the families of the 24 original code talkers no longer living . On September 17 , 2007 , 18 Choctaw code talkers were posthumously awarded the Texas Medal of Valor from the Adjutant General of the State of Texas for their World War II service . On November 15 , 2008 , The Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008 ( Public Law 110 - 420 ) , was signed into law by President George W . Bush , which recognizes every Native American code talker who served in the United States military during WWI or WWII ( with the exception of the already - awarded Navajo ) with a Congressional Gold Medal of individual design for his tribe ( to be retained by the Smithsonian Institution ) , and a silver medal duplicate to each code talker . Popular culture . The 2002 movie " Windtalkers " was a fictional story based on Navajo code talkers who were enlisted in the U . S . Marine Corps in World War II . The 1959 movie " Never So Few " features Charles Bronson as Sgt . John Danforth , a Navajo code talker . The historical novel " Code Talker " portrays a group of Navajos serving in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Theater during World War II . A memoir has been written by an actual code talker . Chester Nez is the last survivor of the original Navajo code talkers in WWII . He helped to develop the famous code and then took it into battle to prove that it would work . His memoir is " Code Talker : The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII . " Web