 |
Celebrating the Native American
"Let us put our minds together and see what life we will make for our children."
Chief Sitting Bull
In setting up this site for August and September I had many decisions to make on how I was going to layout the pages. I knew I could not begin to scratch the surface of information I wanted to use. There are so many things that I could not get into our site this time: the White Buffalo that was born recently, the everyday life of the Native American, their symbols, legends and so forth. I did try to put in a mix of past and present Native American People and their lives.
I chose not to include the slaughters, massacres (on both sides), the taking of land, or Wounded Knee. These are just a few examples ofinformation I didn't include, the list is endless. We need to learn and know about this part of our history. We need to go out and search for the information. We need to fill in the 'gaps' of what we 'know' and to go at it with an open mind.
We can do nothing about the past ... except to know the truth and not accept "rewritten" history. By knowing the past we can make the future better for our cultures and for future generations. This is a statement that is just as true for all cultures. Is it not time that we move past our differences and acknowledge that we are all more alike than different. The things that are different make for a stronger race - the human race. We must never accept injustice as a means to an end. We must correct what we can and strive to do better so we can hand down a better world to the next generation.
I decieded on this for the special events page that is always a part of Miss Sniff. After reading the books and gathering the information I just felt like I would like to share this with others, who like myself, didn't know this part of World War II history. Again, this is just a small portion of the information that can be found on the subject since the unveling of the "code talkers" monument in 1995.
Code Talkers
Much of the information on the "Code Talkers" I got from two books and the U. S. government's documents on the code talkers. Please feel free to e-mail me on where you can buy these two books: The Navajo Code Talkers by Doris A. Paul and Warriors Navajo Code Talkers.
One thing I found to be of interest that is not obvious at first glance in the Warriors Navajo Code Talkers book. These code talkers were Native Americans who fought for the United States, yet a Japanese photographer named Kenji Kawano, was who they chose to be the photographer of the 75 code talkers in this book. The photographer's father fought against the U.S. in WWII. This is a wonderful example of remembering the history, not changing it but accepting each person for their own merits here and now.
I must admit the Navajo Code Talkers was something I was not aware of until a year ago. This part of the history of WWII was never in any books I had read or information I had heard. The Navajo men made a large contribution to the war effort. Through the use of the Navajo language a secret code was used to send messages from the front line to headquarters.
That innformation was vital. The code was totally indecipherable to our enemies. This was one of the best kept secrets of the war. The code was never broken.
The Navajo men were between the ages of 15 and 35. The total number of Navajo code talkers was 200. Originally the code had 200 terms but grew to 600 terms.
Navajo radiomen were used by the Marine Corp to provide secure communicationns. Early in 1942 a test was conducted under simulated battle conditions. The demonstration proved that the Navajo men could encode, transmit and decode a three line English message in 20 seconds. Machines at that time took 30 minutes to do the same thing. The Navajo message was a secure message, the machine messages were not.
At Iwo Jima Major Howard Conner declared "were it not for the Navajos, the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." The first two days of battle Conners and six Navajo code talkers worked around the clock. The six sent and received over 800 messages, all without an error.
In an interview in 1995 Carl Gorman (one of the code talkers) said the following: "Many people ask me why I fought for my country when the government has treated us pretty bad." His answer was "But before the white man came to this country, this whole land was Indian country and we still think it's our land, so we fight for it. I was very proud to serve my country."
We owe much to these men who for so long have not had the recognition that they deserve. The American citizen needs to know about their contribution to the war. We owe so much to all veterans, the words thank you do not seem enough. I think you would find both books informative and bittersweet.
Native American graphics by
|
