บทถอดความฉบับเต็มของ Native American Code Talkers: A Lasting Legacy

developed in the field in combat. It wasn't something that existed in the training manuals or the, army programming or training or anything of that nature. And we have several cases that we know independently. There doesn't seem to have been any central plan either. The situation groups were facing was, the Germans are great linguists in World War one, you know, very intelligent, knew most of the world's major languages and everything. They were breaking our communications regularly, and they had several ways they could do it. They could tap into clip into our lines and simply listen. They had a magnetic listening device that could draw the signal and listen in. They were capturing or taking out 1 out of every 4 of our runners who were physically carrying messages. So the idea, different officers realized that, every time they tried to do something, the Germans were a step ahead. And there's a couple situations, 1 in which an officer is speaking with another officer down the line. And 1 says, how is it with you today? And he said, well, it's fine. The Germans have been showing us all day, but they're they're hitting a hundred yards behind us. They're not, you know, they're not scratching us or doing anything. And within just a couple moments, those shells started coming in right in on his position. And so it dawned on him, they're listening to everything we're saying. So they sent out a a fake message on another day, to move a couple companies of men, some artillery, some supporting units to a particular hill. And they sent the message just like they normally would in everyday English, and tested it, the date, the time. And at precisely a minute or two after that time, that hill was just obliterated by German artillery. So they knew that was their test to see if if they were they were right. So to solve this, different groups began to say, what can we do, to get past this scenario, this situation? And in several of the groups that had a lot of Native Americans, different officers had the idea, well, we have these these Indian boys who they sit around and talk to each other in their own languages all the time. What if we have them send the messages? And so they begin getting small units of them to do just that very thing is, but it was as an experiment, really. It was it was, an adaptation to an existing problem and then, you know, move on and everything. But that's how code starting, code talking started in the first World War. Speaker 0: Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting because I was gonna ask, were was the were the US armed forces specifically recruiting, native people to to do this in World War one, and and it sounds like that's not the case. It was just, as you say, kind of a a circumstance where they they, you know, tried it as an experiment. Speaker 1: They were recruiting natives, but not for their languages. They were recruiting them primarily, because of, you know, kind of stereotypical image about their fighting abilities, but also

the the larger goal at the time was to assimilate them into American society. And this was, in the, military and the government's, view, a very positive or large step towards that is to get them exposed and in the service and everything. So that created large numbers of them in there, but, originally, yeah, you're you're right. It was not for their languages. Speaker 0: And I I really appreciate what you just said too because, 1 of the things when I was reading some of your work that really kind of stood out to me was the irony that this almost couldn't have happened because of the boarding school experiment that was going on with, with American Indian children being kind of forced into these boarding schools and and assimilated and not not allowed to speak their own languages. So had that really succeeded, it's possible that the code talkers wouldn't would never have been able to to come to pass because the languages would no longer have existed. Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And depending on what kind of boarding school you went to and at what age, had a lot to do with whether you came out of the boarding school bilingual or monolingual in English. And, I had the opportunity to, when I first started my work, to interview, people born back in the even. And, there most of them, you know, came through the boarding schools. If they were local boarding schools, they came through it and they still remember their languages. But if they were sent to the far off ones, like out of state, at a very young age, those are the ones that tended to lose it. And then, of course, what they created was 2 or 3 generations that, were made to feel bad about knowing those languages. And when you get to the World War two group, a lot of them still spoke their languages, but they were kind of ashamed at it ashamed of it in a sense of passing it on to their kids. And so a lot of that generation told me they just decided not to teach the kids, because they needed to know English to, you know, in the bigger society. So, but there was there were still plenty of people still speaking it in in both, wars. You know? Speaker 0: Great. Yeah. That's that's really an interesting point too about the irony that it it almost didn't happen. So Yeah. So thank goodness that experiment failed, I guess, we could say. Yes. So so then so when World War one ends, does the did the US Armed Forces maintain any kind of code talker units, but in the era between the 2 World Wars, or or does this just all go away at the end of World War one and it has to kinda be rebuilt, when we get into World War two? Speaker 1: Yeah. There there's no no attempt to, necessarily preserve it or continue it. A lot of it was done also in the very last few months of the war, really towards the end of it. So there are some cases where we know groups only did this once or twice or, relatively few number of days and everything. It it did produce important results on a local basis, you know, just the just the units that were using it. But this is a a really a drop in the bucket of of all the troops involved. After the war, everybody just went home, you know, was happy to have made it out of it. And, so, the army remembered that they had it, and there were some documents. There was a project by a gentleman named, lieutenant John Eddy. He had been the superintendent at Crow Indian Reservation and, so had some experience with Native Americans, and he was gassed very late in the war. And so while he was recovering, they're looking for something that he could do that wasn't that physically taxing, because of the gas. And so he developed a survey that he sent out to the officers in in all the divisions, asking about, how the natives in their units fared, how was their performance, you know, different types of kind of a survey of the American Indian experience in World War one. And a lot of the information, what little we have, if it hadn't been for that survey, it would have never got written down. And so that survey actually preserved several accounts of it from different officers and things. And then, in World War two, they're still aware of it. And then as early as we start recruiting the army starts recruiting a few very small groups specifically to train and and to actually develop codes. And this is something that had occurred in World War one, but didn't get fully used. The Choctaws used their language at a place called Forest Farm, and then they were sent back to a relief camp. They had a week, and then they were getting ready to head out for the campaign towards METS and then Sedan. And during that week, they were given they expanded their group size, and they were given orders to create code words for things that were difficult to say in Choctaw because the native language didn't have that kind of modern concept like a tank or like a grenade or poison gas, those kind of modern things. And so they did create code words, and they had them all ready to go. But the very day after their training, finished of that week was the armistice. And so, the idea to code languages was developed in World War one. The Choctaw is the only group that we actually have a surviving sample of vocabulary, so, we don't know that it actually got implemented. But the languages did work, the ability to get messages across, and that's what was expanded upon in World War two, but with, with a few groups, very large extensive formal codes. Speaker 0: Okay. That so so there were at least some native people that were recruited specifically for this purpose for World War two then? Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. For World War two. Yes. Speaker 0: Great. Speaker 1: The army the army had, I believe, 5 groups and then the marine corps, of course, with the Navajo. Speaker 0: Right. Okay. Alright. Great. That's, yeah, that's really interesting. And I was wondering if they had recruited people specifically for that purpose in World War two, or did they kind of do the same thing you I think you mentioned that

they did in World War one where they just took people who were in other, other military jobs and just Yeah. Sort of gave them this assignment. Okay. Very interesting. So Speaker 1: Let me elaborate on that just a moment. Sure. Of course. Well, like I said, there was about 5 small groups in the army that were recruited, and, the marine corps had the biggest program, of course, with the Navajos, a very large group. In '43 and '44, there's a series of meetings. Now this is before d day in Europe, of course. There's a series of meetings, that I came across the papers of between the army, the navy, and the marine corps. And, of course, the there is no independent air force at this time. It's Speaker 0: Right. Speaker 1: Groups have their respective air corps. And they're debating, the practicality of this. You know, should we use Native Americans? Is it safe? Is it trustworthy? Is it accurate? And it was pointed out that, well, groups did this in World War one, and it still was effective and everything. There was no issues of any kind of, security or problem or honesty or anything like that. But there was a there was a a reticence to continue it because the military said, well, none of us can speak these languages. So we actually can't monitor the transmissions or know what they're really doing. We're just putting our faith in them being accurate enough in getting it done. So the army, decided not to expand the the small co talking groups that it did. The navy said, well, we tested some. It's okay. We just don't really need it for our purposes. And then the marine corps kept quiet in these meetings. They basically said, code talkers, what are you talking about? You know? And and, so they went they were trying to keep their program very, very secretive. Now what the army did was even though they didn't officially or formally recruit any more groups, individual officers took it upon their own initiative in different units if they had multiple natives that spoke the same language, not all, but some of them just pulled men out and created their own little radio teams. And we have cases of 2 men sometimes in a team, 7 men in a team, three, four, etcetera. And so that's what I, distinguish as a type 1 code talking and a type 2. Type 1 has the formal training and the coded vocabulary, and type 2 is just, native speaking in their everyday vernacular language. So there was a lot of type 2 used in World War two, and I did get to I did get to meet some of those individuals and interview some as well as, track down some interviews and things like that. Both were effective. Both worked fine. None were broken. But there's actually, actually, more defacto, code talkers in World War two than there are officially trained ones. You know? Speaker 0: I see. Okay. Well, so, of course, we're the Eisenhower Presidential Library. So as you might imagine, we're primarily interested here in in the European theater of operations Speaker 1: Mhmm. Speaker 0: Because, of course, our namesake was the supreme allied commander. Right. I I think a lot of people, though, as you've already alluded to, when they hear the term code talker, they think maybe perhaps of the Navajo, in the in the Pacific with the marine corps. Yeah. So we've established that there were, code talkers in the European theater of operations. Can you tell us specifically what native, tribes or groups, did a lot of these these European theater code talkers hail from? You you've mentioned a couple already. I'm just not sure if Speaker 1: there's there's Speaker 0: more or not. Speaker 1: There was, 17 Comanches recruited and trained. 14 of them went to Europe, and, 13 landed at Utah Beach. One stayed in England. He was really good at at, cryptology. 13 of them landed at Utah Beach and went in on d day in the in the next couple days or so, and then on through France and Germany and and the the bulge and and all the way to, the end of the war. There is a group of 8 Meskwakis from Tama, Iowa. Most people don't recognize Meskwaki, but they'll recognize the name Sac and Fox. Speaker 0: Mhmm. Speaker 1: So the Meskwakis are the fox part of the Sac and Fox. And, they were, in a, division that went into North Africa and, served at, Kasserine Pass and all that and across, North Africa and then later into Italy. And, there are some Lakotas, that are in an artillery battalion, in Europe as well. There are and this is a very, limited what we know about this. There were some Navajos because there were Navajos everywhere. There are some Navajo who were in Europe who were used as code talkers, in the forty fifth Infantry, Division. We do not know their names. We do not know how many. But Ernie Pyle noticed them, while he was there working among the forty fifth. He heard them. He saw them. He knew what they were doing, and, he made mention of them. So that's a a de facto group, you know, that they put together. They didn't go through the training like the ones in the marine corps did and everything. Interesting. I know of a couple, there's a couple Muskogee guys that met. Edmund Harjo was walking through an apple orchard in, France just a few days after d day, and he heard another gentleman singing a song. And, Edmond Harjo was was, Muskogee, from, Oklahoma. He not only recognized the song as his group, but he recognized the type of song that was being sung. So he made a beeline to that gentleman, and immediately, they started talking in Muskogee. And a, a sergeant heard them and asked them what they were doing, and they said, we're just visiting. We never met each other, but we're from the same group, speak the same language. And he took down their information, said I may be in touch, and they thought, in touch for what? You know? Or like a private and a corporal. You know? And, couple days later, he got a paper transferring him to this unit. And he went there. He said, wait in that tent there, and somebody will be there with you shortly. When he opened the tent blind,

the other guy was sitting in there. And so those 2 guys were pulled and made into a radio team for the rest of the war and everything. So, there were many cases of of that that kind of use of them where, again, you could have somebody up front, pretty far up front, and somebody pretty far back and have a very, important secure line of communication. Speaker 0: Interesting. So so it sounds like, from what you're saying, and and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like even in World War two, there were still some, sort of on the fly ad hoc, whatever you wanna call it, opportunities to put people together who did speak the same native language. Yeah. And and but then were there still were there recruiting efforts going on to recruit specific, specific tribal members, specific native people because their languages were so unique and so difficult to crack? Speaker 1: Only only those first few groups. Gotcha. The there was a group of, let me think now a minute. There was a group of Chippewa and a group of Oneida, two different groups from Michigan and Wisconsin who ended up in a division together. So they had 2 groups. The Comanches were from Oklahoma. The Meskwakis were from Iowa. And then later on, there was a a small group of Hopi put together who the men were already in service, but they were later reassigned and called together. But, no, after after those groups, and particularly after those meetings, they decided not to expand the program. So there was no formal recruiting with the exception of the marine corps. And the marine corps, there are Navajos who were already in service, went through basic, etcetera, or as soon as they got out of basic, they were then reassigned to join a group to train as code talkers. So there was, an ongoing recruitment, an active recruitment of them throughout the war, but not with the European groups. So they had this the few that were that were trained and and formally prepared, and then the rest were, like you say, they were they were, de facto or ad hoc. Speaker 0: Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Speaker 1: It's still effective. So Speaker 0: Oh, sure. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Is there any indication I mean, have we seen any records or any any anecdotes you've heard from from, veteran co talkers that you've spoken with? Is there any indication that that the Germans in the European theater or the Japanese in the Pacific theater ever cracked any of these languages or came close to cracking them? Or or is was this, I mean, basically, a % effective because of just how unique all of these languages are? Speaker 1: Yeah. There's a little bit to that. Let me, let me first explain why the languages work. Speaker 0: Sure. Speaker 1: The basic factors are from a European perspective, these are unknown languages. So, you know, even in America, very unless you were, like, perhaps a trader in a trading post or married to a native, very few people spoke these languages that were not of these of these groups. So it made it an obscure

language in that sense. The second point would be that most of these languages were not yet written in World War one and World War two. Now some were, but the consumption of it was mostly for local consumption, things like Bibles or hymn books or things like that. It wasn't a a booming body of literature, that you could have went to a national library and, you know, pulled things out on so that Europeans didn't have access to that. Third, the syntax is greatly it's not a Indo European language, which the Germans would have, you know, been able to do any of those. So the syntax, the grammar, all that is very, very different than European languages in a lot of cases. And so that would have made the degree of difficulty harder. And then lastly, by putting coded vocabulary into the language, it becomes like another layer. It becomes a a code within an unknown language, kind of a double code, if you will. And so this made it very hard for them to even identify it, but we do know there are some German officers captured in World War one, and, there is a an exchange that was recorded and and, of course, there was courtesy shown among officers and things even even when POWs. And, the German officer asked, to ask a question, and they said, certainly. And he said, you know, we we know all the major languages in the world. We have the finest linguists in the world. We've never heard anything like what you guys were talk speaking on the on the wire. What was it? And they just laughed and said, well, it was American. You know? And, of course, they're not gonna tell them what it was. So they knew it was something different, but, I think I'm sure after the war because there was so much newspaper coverage that, you know, they soon realized it was native. In World War two, the closest that it ever came to this situation was that the Japanese had identified by that it was Navajo being used against them. Speaker 0: Oh, interesting. Speaker 1: And, there were, there were quite a few natives from New Mexico and Arizona in the, it's 1 of the New Mexico coast artillery units, and it was stationed in The Philippines. And a lot of natives in it. So when Bataan fell, when The Philippines fell to the Japanese and the Bataan Peninsula, was, encapsulated, a lot of those Indians were caught there, in, May, Well, the very first Navajos recruited to leave on a bus did not go until, like, the April, in 1942. So the Navajo that were captured in The Philippines, they had no knowledge of any code talking group, a plan to use the language, anything. Well, there was a gentleman named, Joe Kiyomi. His name, when you look at it, sounds Japanese, and there is a there is a word that resembles it very closely, in Japanese. He also has a lot of the Navajos have Asiatic look to them. They look very similar to Japanese of of, many native groups. When they first captured him, they thought he was Japanese American, and so they were beating him. They were punishing him. They were calling him a traitor and things of that nature. And he said, no. No. I'm I'm not, not Japanese. I'm American Indian. You know? And he finally yelled at them, I'm American Indian. I'm a Navajo. You know? Leave me alone. So they basically left him alone for a while. They sent him on a on a hell ship to Japan. He was working in slave labor camps and things. In the they came and pulled him into a room, and, there was, several people there. They had recordings, and they wanted him to listen to these recordings that they had made. And what it was, it was the Navajo code talkers. And so he he didn't know anything about the code being used, your code talkers, and he said, well, that's my language, but it's not my language. It doesn't make sense because he didn't know the code. And they had reassigned all these Navajo terms to represent military things. And so it it was gibberish to him, literally. It was like gibberish. And they didn't believe him, so they they did some really intense, things to him, and and I won't go into all the details. He survived it, but he was tortured a bit, but he could not break it and everything. And he was as fluent a speaker as any of they were. He just simply was not a code talker. But I I I cannot prove it, but I've always suspected the way that they identified it is, they had call signs. And some of the call signs that the that the marines used, the code talkers, they would say New Mexico, New Mexico, or they would say Arizona, Arizona. And that told you you wanted a code talker. In hindsight, that was a mistake. And I think what happened was the Japanese heard that, and so they're like, what is it about this language with New Mexico or Arizona? So you start process elimination. It's not Americans, whites. It's not Spanish. It's gotta be an Indian language. Well, that's who else is down there? Right? Well, who's the biggest Indians down there? The Navajo. The biggest group around. And I think by process elimination, they figured out it must be Navajo. But they could not get it broken. They could not get it broken, and they never captured any, code talkers or anything. So, it worked right up to the, to the end. You know? But that's as close as they came to breaking it. Speaker 0: Okay. Fascinating. Yeah. I'm I'm glad you you went into that, history because, of course, I didn't wanna ignore our friends from the marine corps or from the Pacific Theater. So I was gonna I certainly wanted to make sure we talked about the, the Navajo code talkers as well. As I said earlier, I think to the layperson, if they've heard the term code talker at all, it's probably in reference to the Navajo that that were in the Pacific Theater with the marines. Speaker 1: Mhmm. Speaker 0: I recall there was a there was a film, I don't know, fifteen or twenty years ago with Nicolas Cage about a a code talking unit. I don't remember the name of the film. But, Wind talkers. Wind talkers. That's it. Yes. I did see it, but I it's just been a long time. Yeah. So I

think that maybe raised even more awareness of Yes. Of this this history. So, you know, we won't we won't ask you to, to comment on whether or not Hollywood got everything right there. Speaker 1: Oh, I I can if you want. Speaker 0: Sure. Well, sure. Why not? Go ahead. Speaker 1: Well, it's so they they had they had several Navajo code talkers as technical advisers for the film Speaker 0: and everything. That's good. Speaker 1: And, even before they started shooting, they realized there was a there was a problem. Both the, film writers knew it, the Marine Corps knew it, everybody knew it. And that is the gist of the movie story is a 80 degrees opposite of what actually happened. And and what happened was these Navajos were getting trained, and then they were getting broken up in small units, like 6 or 8 of them to a regiment. Right? That's pretty small. You know? Mhmm. So they would be inserted into these units as new guys. Well, a lot of the Americans looked at them, and they thought, these guys look like they're Japanese. And Bill Toledo had that experience when he first got in his, reassigned to a company. Nobody would talk to him. Nobody would have anything to do with him, and he finally kinda confronted him and said, what's wrong with you guys? You know? They're like, what? You're Japanese. We don't wanna hang out with you. And he's like, I'm not Japanese. I'm a native American. I'm an Indian. You know? And after that, it was a moot point. It was fine. He was welcomed just like 1 of the guys and everything. But what was happening was not when they were actually, like, in their company because people would would know, yes. He's with us. But when they were doing moves or code talkers were sent on messages or they're out of their basic normal position, they would be mistaken as as Japanese and captured by American troops. Again, not not your immediate group in your company right around you, your squads, your platoons, and things, but people in other units or reserve units. And, of course, they they were under orders. They could not tell people what they were doing. All they could say is I'm a radio man. They couldn't talk about the code or anything, and they were only supposed to, talk to officers above a certain level. You know? And so it would take time to vouch these guys, to get them verified or or, vetted as we say today, and then released back to their units. Well, that defeated the whole purpose of why they were created was to be on the radios because they could as quick as I'm talking to you, you could turn around and and translate that into the language, and the message was a go. Whereas if I had to use the shackle cipher, it might be an hour and a half or three, four hours to encrypt a message, send it, get it decoded, and actually implement it. And that was the that was the whole beauty of the code talkers was the speed and the efficiency. And so in the movie, if if they presented a movie as marines who can't recognize other marines and capture them, that would have made the marine corps look inept, which they certainly were not, you know, kinda thing. Speaker 0: Sure. Speaker 1: Of course. But you're not gonna sell a movie on that plot line. So they create the plot line about, well, if we think they're gonna be compromised or captured, then you're ordered to kill them to save the code. And, but, you know, there's a there's some bodyguards that were, that were, interviewed, some of the code talkers. It is a common rumor, and it it still circulates among the Navajo, but we cannot find any kind of official record or anything that says that was a reality. Now they the reason they were assigned bodyguards is because they were being mistaken. So Bill Toledo, again, 1 of the guys I interviewed, he ran a message 1 day, got mistaken as an for a Japanese on the way back to his unit, got captured. As soon as he got vetted and cleared, there was another officer, that was real close to him in that unit. The captain pulled him aside and said, you are with him till the end of this. By his side, you foxhole with him, sleep with him, shower, eat, everything. He does not leave your presence and everything. And so, sometimes the code talkers were told who their bodyguard was, and they knew they had a bodyguard. In other cases, someone was just assigned to shadow them all the time. And so there are some that didn't really realize they had a bodyguard until the later after the war and everything. But it wasn't so much to protect them. It was to their presence vouched for them. If I'm on a radio and there's a white guy here, nobody's gonna say a word, which, you know, you hate to think like that, but that's the reality of it. You're not gonna be confused if you're with a white marine. Sure. It's that simple. And this is another, area I've I've got a manuscript on I'm working on, but not just with the Navajo code talkers, but there was a lot of ethnic misidentification in World War two, because most of these white American guys had not grown up around all these minorities. And so some of them literally could not tell a Hispanic from a Native American from an Asian. And we have dozens and dozens of cases of, people being misidentified, code talkers and non code talkers. You know? And then we even have some of the, Navajos admitting that I can't tell some of the Asians from the other Asians. You know? They're they're too similar. You know? And so it was a very confusing time to have all these cultures shoved together in these small areas in a life or death situation. Speaker 0: Yeah. That's really interesting because as you were talking, I I was I was thinking to myself that that you know, a follow-up question I would ask, and you kind of addressed it here, is did any of the code talkers either that that you had the opportunity to speak to throughout the course of your research, that I know has been going on for for a very long time, or through, you know, interviews you've listened to or read. Did

any of them address any issues of being treated unfairly or being you know, having people say terrible things to them or anything like that because they were they were native? You've kind of talked about the fact that some of them were actually mistaken for Japanese. Mhmm. I wonder if if, I I mean, that clearly wouldn't have been the case in the European theater, but there's certain certainly was still the case, or the opportunity rather for for, Native American soldiers, whether they be code talkers or otherwise, to to sort of face some some bias. Speaker 1: There were stereotypes, of course, still and everything. And there were comments sometimes made about, you know, being on the reservation or drinking or things of that nature or, every native was addressed as chief. You know, that's the nickname. It had become chief. And most people I interviewed said, yeah. I didn't really care about that. You know, some groups didn't have formal chiefs. You know? I have met a couple people that did say, yeah. I didn't like the term. It was you know? But it wasn't really meant derogatory. It's really meant, everybody in everybody in world war two had a nickname. You know? And my grandpa told me all all the guys have time. They didn't know their real name. They knew them by their nickname. You know? And, but they were all called chief and everything. There is what, what Tom Holm developed. He's a Native American veteran and a retired, professor, developed the concept of the Indian scout syndrome. And that is it's a series of really what are positive stereotypes about Indians and their martial abilities. So the idea that, you know, Indians can move through the woods quieter than non Indians, travel farther, faster, see farther in the dark, you know, all these kind of natural and the the assumption that it's it's in biologically inherent, that it's just in your blood, you know, kinda thing. And, of course, you'll have people of all groups tell you, you know, it's complete fallacy. There are some natives that grew up in the city and didn't have those, and then there's others that grew up in the country which were very adept. And the same way with whites. You know, there's some whites who were, trappers and hunters and very good at military things and others that were quite clumsy, you know, depending on their background. So there are those kind of stereotypes. I didn't find a lot and, of course, we're we're prone to call everything racist today. That's the the the the general, reaction today. But I only found 1 case in all the Navajo code talker interviews where somebody said, I really felt this was racist. The rest of them said, to me, it seemed like most of it was it was either just ignorance or it was curiosity. People might ask you a dumb question, but it wasn't out of malice, you know, kinda thing. And, the gentleman that were and and the reason why I say, I don't find a a a tremendous amount of overt racism. Now there was still racism at home against the

natives, and that continued after the war. Even some of the code talkers when they came back received dismal treatment from the public and everything. But they said we didn't have that in the marine corps, and we didn't have that in the army. There wasn't a lot of room for that. Now you may have some guys that didn't like you or say something once in a while, but there really wasn't the ability for that to be carried very far. It was counterproductive to the unit. You know? And, so, a couple of the guys I remember, they talked about where they were mistaken. Mhmm. And then after that, as soon as it was cleared up, the other soldiers said, you know, sorry, chief. We thought you were 1 of them. You know? And then they're like, let me carry your radio for you. Let me carry your, you know, your whatever. And and some of them became friends with the guys that mistaken them mistook them. But there was no malice any further after that. As soon as they were verified as Native American, it was a moot point. You're 1 of us. You know? So, you know, it wasn't a perfect world, but you also had banter between different European minorities too. That was just your time. You know? That was a common common time of the era. But most of them said they felt that they were treated pretty fairly. The only thing is that they were held back in terms of promotions. They were not promoted very much at all. But the reason being is had they been promoted, they would have been taken out of the role of a coat talker. And so if some of them, there's a couple sergeants, some corporals, but most of them stayed privates and things. Because if you if you got promoted very heavily, that would have took you away from that situation to do what you were trained to do, and that was more valuable than them just filling a rank at a certain level. You know? Okay. Speaker 0: That's a realistic point. Yeah. That's Speaker 1: logic yeah. There's a logic behind I'm not saying it was fair. It it wasn't. Sure. But there's a logic of why they were not promoted heavily. They were there to do something so specific that no one else could. Speaker 0: Yeah. And, I mean, no literally no one else could do it. So it was imperative to keep them where they were to continue to perform that incredibly important task. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't just like calling back to the, supply depot and getting 10 more riflemen, you know, in Yeah. Absolutely. Situation. Speaker 0: Okay. Well, I I know that in doing some of the reading of some of your work to to sort of study up for this conversation, I I read a piece that you wrote about a a a long overdue recognition of native people that served as code talkers on Capitol Hill, several years ago. So I thought maybe we could close with just you maybe describing what that event was like and how you came to be part of that, and and what did that mean to the people who who were recognized that day? Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's a 2 part thing. I got a phone call. I did

the book on the Comanche Code Talkers in 02/2. And, somewhere in the February,, might have been my second semester here at Missouri State, I got a phone call from sender Tom Daschle's office. And, at first, I honestly didn't think it was really sender Tom Daschle's office because I know people who make those kind of phone calls. I have friends. You know? But they assured me that it was, and, so they asked me to come up and and, testify on a senate committee committee hearing. And, so I went up. It was the day that the National Museum of the American Indian opened. So I believe it was Sept. 23, I think, 0th of February,. And, we had basically, each of us had fifteen minutes to present in front of this congressional panel. So Ben Nighthorse Campbell was the chair. Yep. So the, I was there. To my left was Greg Pyle, the the, president or the, chief of the Choctaw Nation. Melvin Kerchie junior, the vice chairman of the Comanche Nation, was beside me. There were some Ho Chunk. There were some Lakota. There were some military officers, but we had, I was 1 of the formal presenters. So they asked me to come up, and present any and all about all Native American code talkers that I knew of. And this was aimed at the non Navajo because the Navajo had been awarded in 02/2001 with the congressional, medal. Not not the medal of honor, the congressional gold medal and silver medal. And they wanted to do the same thing. They wanted to hear about the same possibility for the other groups. And so part of my research was to show what a vast number of them there were. Also, they came from World War one originally, so many of these groups were were, even the World War two groups were recruited before the Navajos. But the Navajo, like we said, it gets more attention and and rightly so. There's possibly as many as 420 Navajo that were trained as code talkers. The biggest group beyond that is 17. So, naturally, they they have a much larger pool. Approximately 285 of the Navajo actually were used in combat and everything. After their code was declassified in '68 and everything, they formed a Navajo code talker association, So they become very visible. You know? Now like I say, the largest code talking group beyond the Navajo is only 17 people. So that's really not enough to have a big organization after the war and things. So they are are better known. So we all testified that day, and then the phone just never stopped ringing. Different tribes called me, different kinds of levels of congressional and and state representatives and things called me. So legislation was started later that fall. It took 4 times to go through it. The Choctaws went up and lobbied. The Comanches went up and lobbied several times. There were, of course, letters, and we continued to submit documentation and things on different groups and questions and things. And then finally in 02/8, the act was passed. And then, they design they started designing the metals for the other tribes, the non Navajo

groups. And at first, they were gonna design 1 metal style for all of them. And, of course, the tribe said, no. You're not. Each we're gonna have our own medal, our style, our symbols, what's important to us. So each tribe had a medal designed for them, and the tribes participated in the design, working with the US Mint and everything. So it was a back and forth process. So finally in 02/13, 25 of the 33 groups were awarded their medals that day, and the other 5 have come since then. They were still in the design process and everything. It was, it it was an amazing day. We we met in the, Emancipation Hall, underneath there, Emancipation Hall and everything at the Capitol. It was a it was a huge, you know, standing room only kinda crowd and everything. Again, you've got people there from well over 30 some tribes and everything. They had each, 1 representative of each tribe come up and actually receive the medal. There were speeches by several, congressional representatives and and, senators and things of that nature. After that, that was the gold medal presentation. After that, we moved to the National Museum of the American Indian down the hill, and they had the silver medal ceremonies there in different rooms broken up. And then I had the chance afterwards, I I was with some Lakotas up there, and South Dakota decided to have their own ceremony in the Dirksen Senate Building. So we went to a third one that day just for the North and South Dakota tribes, you know, and everything. There were several wives of the code talkers present. There were some wives there. Lots of, you know, children, nephews, and nieces and things. At the gold ceremony, Edmund Harjo was the 1 World War 2 living code talker who was still physically able to make the the trip. And he was in a wheelchair, and when he when he saluted the flag and they presented him with the medal, it was a magical moment. I mean, everyone was just, applauding in tears, just moving, because he he was actually able to be there and receive it in person. And and it's it's great that he did. I think, maybe five months later, he passed. You know, he was very elderly, but he was the 1 that got to experience it, and everything. Some of the tribes then went home and had their own celebrations in many most of them did in their own tribal, gymnasiums or complexes or, you know, centers and things and had a formal dinner and sometimes a dance and things. So this this went on really for several months in a sense, even after the gold medals and everything. But it was a, it's nothing like I I never imagined I would get to participate in anything like this. You know? And so it it it has a a different road, but a very special thing for me. And, of course, thinking about the, the ones that I got to work with from the different tribes and things and the interviews and things like that. So it it has a has a special meaning for me. You know? But, it's so important to the tribes because most of these tribes will have that gold medal, like, the Comanches have it in their tribal museum, the Choctaws have it in theirs, etcetera. And, it it's a huge source of pride of kind of regained history because it's something that wasn't talked about, very little known about it until really the last twenty so years. And I think that will that will just go on indefinitely, you know, is now that they have been, because that's the highest award congress can give anyone is the congressional gold medal. And so I think that's a very important legacy that hearkens back not just to the native military service, but the irony of the boarding schools again, the willingness to protect, their lands and people as well as The United States. You know? And, and to do, to have a, in this case, a really unique form of doing it. So, like, some of them said, my language was my weapon. You know? Speaker 0: And That's a that's a that's a great line. That's a great quote. That's Yeah. That makes that makes that really brings it all home, I think. Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh, it's like 1 of 1 of the guys told me in the interview, he said, you know, not not making light of any man that served, but if you can pass basic and pass the physical, everybody knows how to carry a carbine and fire it and everything. You know? But this language as 1 of the Comanches that told him, this language, only 17 of us were in that unit. We're the only ones that had that tool, that weapon at that time. And so rightly so, they took great pride in that. You know? And but very humble men. I I will add that I never knew any of the code talkers themselves to seek the recognition. It was always, their tribes or relatives or scholars or, you know, governmental representatives. It was other people that sought the recognition for them. They just went home and got on with their lives and and did productive things. You know? And, so I think that speaks, we're we are in such a, attention driven society today, but, this generation and this class of men were very humble about it, really. Very, very humble. Speaker 0: Well and that's in line with what you hear about a lot of of veterans of of any conflict that, you know, come home and and get on with their lives and and don't always really wanna talk about it or seek attention. So, I mean, I think Yeah. It sounds like, you know, they were they were certainly of that same of that same view. And then just as a follow-up, you know, last question, I guess, are any code talkers still living today, or have they all all passed away now? Speaker 1: The best I know, there a while back, there were 3 Navajos still alive that were that were recognized. 1 of them that I knew has since passed, John Kinsell, passed away not too long ago. The other 2, from what I know, are, you know, very aged, very far up, and not in good shape and everything. The that's a hard question to answer because there there may be cases of somebody who was but was never identified. We just don't know. And then also with the with the Navajo, there were so many of them. But there's some of them that after the war, they they never got involved with the association or anything with the code talkers. So, again, it's hard to know what all became of some of them. You know? But as far as I know, there's only those 2 gentlemen left. You know? And that, and that's, that will be it. You know? And, we do have, a fair amount of, of interviews and and film footage with them and, you know, documentation for some groups and very little for others. You know? Speaker 0: Sure. Well, I think that's, you know, what they're experiencing with having very few of their their veterans left is is also going on in the larger society. Of course, we we, you know, do a lot of of, events here with, you know, about World War two and about Eisenhower's role. Yeah. But we we understand too that, you know, unfortunately, World War two veterans, are are are few and far between anymore. Yeah. But, it sounds like that's the case for the code talkers as well. So, well, I wanna thank you, Bill, for for coming on today. This has been a a really, enlightening and and wonderful conversation. I hope that this proves to be helpful to anyone who wants to research this topic. And, if anybody is researching this topic, I I certainly hope that they'll be picking up, your many works on this subject because there everything that I saw was was really excellent and and very informative. So thanks for your work, and I hope that there's more great stuff to come from you on this topic. Speaker 1: I'm working on the World War two volume. So Speaker 0: Excellent. Well, thanks. I want a special thanks to you, doctor Bill Meadows of Missouri State University, for for being with us today. Again, a fascinating topic and look forward to to more of your research coming out. And, for the rest of you, I'll say thanks again for tuning in to the Club Eisenhower podcast. This is a project of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas, and we'll see you next time.