USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In addition to the language itself being a form of code to German eavesdroppers, the Comanches developed their own lingo of 250 code words to describe military and geographical terms for which there was no native word.

Detailed explanation-2: -Lloyd Oliver, a Navajo Code Talker, operates a field radio while attached to a Marine artillery regiment in the South Pacific in 1943. Despite the thousands of messages that Code Talkers sent during WWII, their code was never broken by the Japanese or the Germans, who were very good at decryption.

Detailed explanation-3: -After the war, however, Japan’s own chief of intelligence admitted there was one code they were never able to break-the Navajo code used by the Marine Corps.

Detailed explanation-4: -The idea to use the Navajo language as the basis of a secure radio code was proposed to the Marine Corps by Philip Johnston, a veteran of World War I who had spent much of his childhood on the Navajo Reservation where his parents worked as missionaries.

Detailed explanation-5: -Why wasn’t the code ever broken? The Navajo language has no definite rules and a tone that is guttural. The language was unwritten at the time, notes Carl Gorman, one of the 29 original Navajo code talkers. “You had to base it solely on the sounds you were hearing, ” he says.