messages we were sending in English were being intercepted by English speaking Japanese. They then would change or countermand the message, which caused much confusion and many deaths.

What was the origin of this mysterious code that so baffled the enemy? First we must travel to the Northwest part of the state of Arizona. Here we find the largest Indian Reservation in America. This is the home of the Navajo Indians. They live in a house with eight sides, made of logs and covered with red adobe mud. There are no windows and only one door facing East. The people sleep on pallets on the floor. A wood burning stove or fire place is placed in the center. Most of the Navajo Indians are very poor, most live without running water or electricity. The country is a remote, wild and rugged land. It is also a very beautiful and large lonesome place. It is larger than all of New England and twice the size of the whole country of Israel.

Most of the outside world considered them to be primitive, ignorant, red savages. In fact, the government placed the Navajo Indian tribe in this area bringing them up from Oklahoma. It hoped that this harsh environment would destroy them

completely. (Little did the U.S. Government know it was giving the Navajo nation their ancestral homeland back.) But there was one 50 year old white man who knew this. He was a civil engineer named Philip Johnson who lived in Los Angeles, California. He grew up on the Navajo Indian reservation because his

parents were Protestant missionaries living there. Johnson knew enough about the Navajo language to believe it would make a complex code to send important military messages safely.

He went to the Marine Corp signal office and they were delighted with his proposal. They made him a Master Sergeant to spearhead the Navajo Code Talkers Program. Now, most of the Navajo code talkers were just young school boys in their teens. Marine regulations required an enlistee to be between 18 and 30 years of age. But the Navajos were needed so much, that some were accepted when only 14 years old, and one person, Carl Gorman who was 39 was accepted as only 28. Soon, 400 Navajo Indians were trained as "Code Talkers." It was a complicated code that was based around the Navajo language. For example: "Corps" became DIN-NEH-IH (Clan) "Colonel" became ATSAH-BESH-LE-GAIN (Silver Eagle), "Dive bomber" became GINI (Chicken Hawk) and "Aircraft carrier" became (Bird carrier). The Navajo Code Talkers could encode, transmit and decode a three line message in English in twenty seconds. But sophisticated military coding machines required one half hour to do the same task. The Navajos served on most of our island invasions, including Guadalcanal, Tinian, Saipan, Bouqanville, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. Without the Code Talkers we would never have captured Iwo Jima. There,  six code talker networks operated around the clock, sending and receiving over 800 critical messages without error.

Each Code Talker was assigned a "Belakana" (white man) for a body guard. No Code Talker was ever captured by the Japanese. But because of their somewhat Oriental appearing features, they were often mistaken for the enemy by their own troops. For Japanese soldiers sometimes took uniforms off our dead, put them on, and tried to infiltrate our lines.

Seven of the Navajo Code Talkers were killed in combat and many received Purple Heart Medals for being wounded in action. After the war was over,  the Navajo code was classified as "Top Secret" and kept that way for 23 years. Not until 1968 was the secret classification dropped.

It is a remarkable feat, forever recorded in history, that these so-called primitive, ignorant, red savages

invented the only unbreakable military war code! And remember, that most of them were just teenage school boys! The Navajo Code Talkers were certainly World War Two heroes! How did the United States government reward these gallant Native American Navajo Indians? They were denied all their G.I. benefits under the G.I. Bill that covered all other veterans!

Here is their incredible excuse; because the Navajo Indians live on the Indian Reservation, they are occupying Federal land. Therefore, that "somehow" nullifies their G.I. Bill rights.

I believe the Indians were scalped.
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