Surrounded by complex machines, the exhibit on Native American Code Talkers appears out of place, but it is actually a monument to the most complex machine of all - the human mind.
Having suffered losses in the First World War as a result of the Germans listening to U.S. communications, the commander of the U.S. Army’s 142nd Infantry Regiment found a solution. Captain Lawrence overheard two Choctaws speaking in their own language. He arranged for them to become radio communicators. They used common words to replace military terms and spoke Choctaw, thus becoming the first Code Talkers.
On 26 October 1918, in northern France's Argonne Forest, the Choctaws' communications resulted in a completely successful surprise attack against the Germans. Initially there were eight Choctaw Code Talkers, but with subsequent successes, six more were quickly trained.
Germany and Japan sent students to study the Native American cultures and languages following WWI. For this reason, there were many in the U.S. military services who were concerned that the use of code talkers in the Second World War would be insecure. However, the Army did continue the program and during World War II recruited Commanches, Choctaws, Kiowas, Winnebagos, Seminoles, Navajos, Hopis, Cherokees and others.
The Marine Corps took the Army work and codified, expanded, refined and perfected it into a true security discipline, using Navajos exclusively. The Marine Corps felt the Navajo language would be more secure for several reasons: the language was virtually unknown outside the Navajo nation, it was unwritten, and it was so complex, involving tonal inflections, that it was difficult to learn as an adult. The original 29 recruits began training in May 1942. Over the course of the war, approximately 400 Navajos (and one Caucasian) became part of this very successful code talking program. In campaigns against the enemy on many fronts, the Native American Code Talkers never made a mistake in transmission nor were their codes ever broken.
In 2002, MGM Studios released the motion picture Windtalkers.