Tag Archives: Code Talkers

national news

‘Pretty wild scene’ … do ya think?

I really have to hand it to Donald John “Orator in Chief” Trump.

The man has an amazing way of understating monumental historical events’ impact on our nation’s life, its history, its very identity.

The president played host to survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which occurred 76 years ago this week.

He turned to one of the men who lived through that hell on Earth, telling him “That was a pretty wild scene.”

Yeah. Pretty wild it was, Mr. President. Why, you even told a small gathering of Navajo “Code Talkers” recently how much you “like” them. That was so, um, nice of you to say that.

It makes me wonder how this president would have reacted had he been standing at the Capitol Hill podium the next day to ask Congress for a declaration of war. Whereas President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it a “date which will live in infamy,” and a “deliberate, dastardly attack,” I keep wondering whether Donald Trump could muster up the kind of awe-inspiring rhetoric that came from FDR that day.

Something tells me we’d be called to arms with “pretty wild scene.”

military news

Trump managed to yank spotlight from WWII heroes

Leave it to the inimitable Donald John Trump Sr. to do the seemingly impossible.

Three men — all heroes from World War II — came to the White House recently to be honored for their exploits during the great conflict.

So, what did the president do? With a thoughtless, careless quip he turned attention from the men and those who they represent and turned it onto himself for all the wrong reasons.

He said he “liked” the men who stood with him in the White House. He then chided a member of the U.S. Senate who has said she, too, has Native American heritage in her background. Trump just had to call Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” which he has used for years to deride her claim. That’s what the media have been talking about, not about the men who served so heroically.

The men are Code Talkers. They are of Navajo descent. They were deployed as Marines during World War II to communicate battle plans and intelligence in a language the Japanese couldn’t de-code. They were instrumental in several key Pacific Theater battles.

CNN.com published a story chronicling the men’s heroics.

See the story here.

The story notes that the use of Native American tongues in war began in World War I, when Choctaw soldiers spoke to each other to confound the Germans on the other side of the battle lines. But in the period between the world wars, the Germans figured out that language.

The Navajo was more difficult to decipher. As CNN.com noted, it isn’t a written language. Therefore, the enemy was unable to figure what they were listening to when the Navajo Marines were communicating.

They risked their lives. They fought for their country.

Only 13 of the Code Talkers are still living. They all are old men who are suffering the usual ravages of aging.

The president should have known better than to yank the spotlight from those heroes. He should have shown a semblance of class and grace as he welcomed these brave Americans to salute their commitment to their country.

Indeed, if the president understood or appreciated anything about the sacrifice these men paid, he might have seen fit to keep his mouth shut about a political foe.

 

national news

POTUS bullied Sen. Warren?

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I have heard some “bullying” references in the past day or so about Donald John Trump’s idiotic reference to “Pocahontas” at a ceremony saluting the Native American Code Talkers who helped win World War II.

The president, standing in front of President Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson, made a tacky and totally inappropriate reference to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claim of Native American heritage. He referred to her as “Pocahontas,” which he has used to disparage the Democratic senator for as long as he’s been a politician.

Trump’s crack about Sen. Warren yanked attention away from the Code Talkers, who were deployed during WWII to communicate battle plans in their native language, which the enemy couldn’t translate. What’s more, he did so while standing in front of an American president, Jackson, who issued an eviction order that launched what amounted to a 19th-century Native American death march, aka the Trail of Tears.

Now comes the references from some observers that he sought to “bully” Warren with that idiocy.

This brings to mind an issue I have raised before: When is the first lady going to launch her anti-bullying initiative, which she announced she would make her theme during her time in the White House?

Many of us out here have wondered whether Melania Trump should counsel her husband, the bully in chief, about his own proclivities toward using Twitter as an intimidation tool.

The first lady aims to target her campaign toward children bullying their peers. My thought is this: Children aren’t born to bully; they learn about it from many sources, including their elders.

Melania needs to sit down with Donald and tell him about the consequences of his own juvenile behavior.

If only he would listen.

political news

‘Pocahontas’ crack continues to blow back

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLJLGJ8m5dE

I wish I could say I am surprised and shocked at what Donald John Trump said today in a White House ceremony.

I’m not. It’s almost becoming an expected event.

Some distinguished Americans gather for a ceremony honoring them for their service to the nation and the president of the United States — who had zero public service experience before being elected to his high office — cheapens it beyond all recognition.

Trump welcomed some Native Americans today. These were 90-something men who when they were much younger were called to duty to defend the nation against tyranny during World War II. They are the legendary Code Talkers, who communicated in their native tongue, which the enemy could not decipher.

Then the president makes the “Pocahontas” crack, disparaging U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who has contended Native American ancestry is in her background. Trump has been savaging Warren for years over her assertion that she has Cherokee ancestry in her family background.

Warren called it a “racial slur.” Navajo leaders have issued a statement that said the president’s remarks demonstrated “racial insensitivity.”

Are you surprised? Neither am I.

All the president had to do was offer a nation’s thanks to these brave men — all of whom are former U.S. Marines — for the gallantry they exhibited during our nation’s desperate struggle. All he had to do was honor these men and praise them to the hilt for the bravery they demonstrated while defending this nation against forces that sought to destroy it.

He couldn’t do that. No, all the president did — with his careless and idiotic quip — was destroy a moment that by all rights should have belonged exclusively to a group of American heroes.

Disgraceful.

military news

Trump sure has a way with words

Donald John “Quipster in Chief” Trump Sr. is the master of context and impeccable timing.

The president welcomed some Navajo veterans of World War II. They were the legendary Code Talkers who helped win the U.S. combat effort in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

The White House event was set up to honor those veterans, all gallant Marines. So what does the president do? The idiot in chief decided to shoot a barb at a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate.

According to The Hill: Trump said the Code Talkers “were here long before any of us were here,” referencing, I suppose, their Native American heritage. Then the said, “Although we have a representative in Congress who they say was here a long time ago. They call her Pocahontas.”

What a knee-slapper!

His reference is to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who Trump has been deriding for years because Warren claims to have some Native American ancestry in her background.

The former Marines didn’t react to Trump’s dig. Hmm. Imagine that. They are too dignified to get snookered into that kind of childishness.

Read The Hill story here.

For the record, the Code Talkers were deployed in the Pacific Theater to communicate battle plans and intelligence in their native language, which the enemy couldn’t decipher. Precious few of these brave men are left.

The president simply couldn’t salute these men’s valiant service to their country during its darkest time without offering a stupid remark about a contemporary political opponent?

Is this what his fans call “telling it like it is”?

I prefer to call it a demonstration of stupidity.

military news, Uncategorized

Code Talkers provided unique heroism

NAVAJO COUNTY, Ariz. — I guess it goes back to the first time I ever heard of the Code Talkers.

Every time I see the word “Navajo,” I think of those brave men.

We blazed through Navajo County today on our way home and the thought of the Code Talkers came pouring through.

Equally compelling, in my view, is thinking of the individual who conceived the mission our armed forces handed these brave Americans. Credit for employing the Navajo Code Talkers has gone to Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles. He was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of missionaries … and spoke the language fluently.

The Navajo weren’t the first Native Americans to answer the call to become Code Talkers. Their language is believed to be the only one the enemy never  decoded.

The mission handed to Navajo Indians was to devise a code that would baffle the Japanese in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Someone in the War Department figured that the enemy couldn’t possibly understand what was being said between Americans who spoke a language that was as unique as any on the planet.

Japanese cryptographers were able to decipher some coded messages during the war. So, to get around their knowledge of how to break our codes, U.S. war planners devised a code using the Navajo language.

Imagine sitting in a Japanese communications monitoring station, listening to individuals speaking to each other in a language you’ve never heard. You cannot identify it as, say, French, Russian or Spanish — let alone English.

That was the work of the Code Talkers. They’re all gone now. They were heroes in the absolute truest sense of the word.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/06/04/r-i-p-heroic-american/

I’ve long honored them for the heroism they performed. I also have honored Philip Johnston, who concocted this crazy notion of employing a language the enemy couldn’t decipher.

Brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant.

 

Uncategorized

R.I.P., heroic American

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An American hero has died. He’s the last of a special brand of fighting men who, when duty called during our nation’s bloodiest war, answered in a unique and inspiring way.

Chester Nez, 93, died in Albuquerque, N.M. He was the last of the original 29 Code Talkers, Navajos who were tasked with developing a code that the enemy could not decipher.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2014/06/last_of_world_war_iis_original.html#incart_river_default

I long have wondered something about the tactic developed during World War II that produced the Code Talkers: Who in the world at what was then called the War Department come up with this idea?

It was utterly brilliant.

Nez was one of 29 men who formed the first Code Talker unit. The Navajos developed a glossary that they expanded into a full vocabulary of terms they used to communicate with each other in the Pacific Theater of operations. The Japanese had been able to crack many encryptions. The Navajo code? Forget about it.

The Code Talkers were speaking in a language that had not put into writing. The Japanese would hear and could not tell what language it was, let alone what the U.S. Marines who spoke were saying.

“It’s one of the greatest parts of history that we used our own native language during World War II,” Mr. Nez said in a 2009 interview with the Associated Press. “We’re very proud of it.”

The next year, Mr. Nez said that “the Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did.”

The Code Talkers would be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2001 and would be acclaimed for the genius they used in employing such an amazingly innovative tactic to use against a fierce enemy.

May this great hero, Chester Nez, now rest with the others who helped their nation win a titanic struggle.