Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 02:37:48 JST Author-ized L.J.

   "German authorities knew about the use of #codeTalkers during World War I. Germans sent a team of thirty anthropologists to the United States to learn Native American languages before the outbreak of World War II. However, the task proved too difficult because of the large array of Indigenous languages and dialects." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker

   I mean, 'Nazis defeated by diversity' seems almost a tautology and yet... :blobcat_giggle: #history #NationalCodeTalkersDay #NationalCodeTalkersDay

   • Embed this notice
     Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 03:43:59 JST Author-ized L.J.

     in reply to

     "The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered."

     First, damn. Second, never let it be forgotten this achievement was the product of the code talkers' own ingenuity and cooperation--they created the initial code, and they met to update it in response to the demands of field use. Navajo creativity and resourcefulness, based on their heritage that settlers attempted to annihilate, beat the difficult problem of tactical speed cryptography, decoding in 20 seconds messages the machines at the time took 30 minutes to process. The Navajo code books were never taken into the field (that was how the Nazis' Enigma code books were captured, during battle); the code talkers kept everything in memory, and they beat the latest computing technology and the advances of the Japanese Empire's cryptography. If that's not punk as fuck idk what is.

     Edit: It seems that other Native spoken codes such as the Comanche one were also never cracked, see The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II by William C. Meadows.

   • Embed this notice
     Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 03:44:01 JST Author-ized L.J.

     in reply to

     "The Navajo code talkers were commended for the skill, speed, and accuracy they demonstrated 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 said, 'Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.'"

     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 03:44:02 JST Author-ized L.J.

     in reply to

     "Platoon 382 was the Marine Corps' first 'all-Indian, all-Navajo' Platoon. The members of this platoon would become known as The First Twenty-Nine. Most were recruited from near the Fort Wingate, NM, area. The youngest was William Dean Yazzie (aka Dean Wilson), who was only 15 when he was recruited."

     Sounds illegal as shit, man

   • Embed this notice
     Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 03:44:03 JST Author-ized L.J.

     in reply to

     "Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not mutually intelligible with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information."

     Thank you for this excellent excuse for the complete failure of my attempts to pick up Navajo 🙏

   • Embed this notice
     Author-ized L.J. (ljwrites@writeout.ink)'s status on Friday, 16-Aug-2024 03:44:04 JST Author-ized L.J.

     in reply to

     "Comanche soldiers of the 4th Signal Company compiled a vocabulary of 250 code terms using words and phrases in their own language. Using a substitution method similar to that of the Navajo, the code talkers used descriptive words from the Comanche language for things that did not have translations. For example, the Comanche language code term for tank was turtle, bomber was pregnant bird, machine gun was sewing machine, and Adolf Hitler was crazy white man."