Marsh Kumos
Historiography
Disclaimer: The name and anything else in this story is fictional, however, the Codetalkers were real. They were an integral and important part of United States military history.
Name: John Holden
Age: 17
Occupation: soldier, code talker.
Tribe: Navajo
John Holden was six when he was taken from the reservation and told that in order for him to fully adjust as an American he must learn English and distance himself from the ways of his tribe. In the boarding school, far from the reservation he grew up in he, learned the ways of the rest of white Americans. He learned to dress like them, talk like them, act like them, eat like them. He learned to not be a Native American.
He was 14 when he returned to the reservation and resumed life within the reservation and, he was 17 when he was conscripted during World War II to be a code talker. Citizenship had been given to all the Native Americans born on United States soil in 1924, but the code talkers who had served before him from the Comanche, Choctaw tribes during World War I had not been citizens. They had not yet been granted United States citizenship at the time, but he had grown up having had citizenship.
When he heard that the army was recruiting young Native American men for the war effort he asked his father if he could go and, after much persuasion was granted permission. He lived among the other soldiers, dressed like them, ate and trained among them, but none of them knew exactly why him and other Native Americans had been recruited. They assumed, like the rest of them that they were just soldiers. The other soldiers did not know that in actuality they, had been trained as code talkers. The codetalkers were secret units that used their own Native American languages to carry secret messages that the United States military did not wish axis forces to get a hold of.
The code talkers are real, and though many of them have since died there are still a few left. The majority have since died due to old age but the few remaining code talkers are all currently very old, with many in their 90s. Information about the Code Talkers can be found at the following websites which, have been linked below. The most well-known of the Code Talkers were the Navajo which, originally started off with 29 and grew to over a 100 during the course of World War II.
The Code Talkers were not all of age as, several of them lied about their age to get in and, there were code talkers as young as 14-15 in the ranks. The first Code Talkers were originally Choctaw and Comanche that were recruited during WWI.
The irony of them serving in the WWI war effort was, of course, that although they served they, did not have citizenship. Official citizenship was not given to Native Americans born on US soil until 1924 under the Indian Citizenship Act. There were however, no designated code talking units during World War I. Official code talking units as well as an official terminology using Native American words for code talking in message transmission was created in WWII. WWI code talkers simply translated messages into their own native languages when talking over radios with secret messages that they did not want enemy forces to get a hold of.
Links
Navajo Code Talkers
Code Talkers
Native American code talkers
National Archives
BBC information about WWI code talkers
WWI Choctaw Code talkers: History Channel information
Code Talker codes
Comanche code talkers
.: linked credits
Pattern 0-credit goes to Leru66 on colourlovers for the pattern-Pattern 1 - Pattern 2 - Photograph - Profile-Art/Overlay - Coding
