Smithsonian Exhibit Honors Code Talkers

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Native Words, Native Warriors, a Travelling Exhibit

Bill Toledo, an 85-year-old Native American, speaks throughout the United States about his life as a Navajo Code Talker during World War ll.
The exhibit “Native Words, Native Warriors” is a comprehensive study through facts and photos at the acclaimed Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum located in the subtropics of Florida at the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation through July 6, 2009. It is one of several museums throughout the country where this exhibit has travelled.

Using their Native language to create an indecipherable code, the code talker’s efforts were significant without which the United States may not have been victorious. “Sworn to secrecy when we joined the code talkers, we were instructed to talk to no one about the code when we were discharged,” he told a gathering hosted by the Seminole Tribe of Florida. “We were one of the military’s secret weapons. Finally on August 4, 1982, President Ronald Reagan declared Navajo Code Talkers Day and declassified our role in the military service.” (Seminole Tribune, May 29, 2009)

Toledo spoke at the opening of a Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibit that traces the history of the famed code talkers. The exhibit “Native Words, Native Warriors” is a comprehensive study through facts and photos at the acclaimed Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum located in the subtropics of Florida at the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation through July 6, 2009. It is one of several museums throughout the country where this exhibit has travelled.

When Toledo was 18, the U.S. was deeply involved in the war and the Japanese were decoding the Allied Forces military codes as fast as they were created. Philip Johnston, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was raised on the Navajo reservation and spoke the obscure language fluently. It was his suggestion that a military code in the Navajo language be developed. It proved impossible to break.

Approximately 500 Native Americans from 18 tribes served in the code talker program creating codes from their various Native languages. There were code talkers sending and receiving codes not only from the trenches of the Pacific but from the European and African theaters as well. Most were Navajo but others were Comanche, Pawnee, Cherokee, Chippewa, Sioux , Choctaw, Kiowa, Hopi and other tribes.

Read more: http://nativeamericanfirstnationshistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/native_american_war_heroes#ixzz0IhLSE0X0&C

Read more: http://nativeamericanfirstnationshistory.suite101.com/article.cfm/native_american_war_heroes#ixzz0IhLOIYdV&C