Research Guides: World War II: Native Americans

Internet Resources

American Indian Code Talkers
The idea of using American Indians who were fluent in both their traditional tribal language and in English to send secret messages in battle was first put to the test in World War I with the Choctaw Telephone Squad and other Native communications experts and messengers. However, it wasn’t until World War II that the US military developed a specific policy to recruit and train American Indian speakers to become code talkers.
Native Words, Native Warriors: Telling a More Complete Story about American Indian Code Talkers
While many Americans are familiar with the idea of “code talkers,” knowledge about the fuller lives, stories, and experiences of American Indian Code Talkers is incredibly limited. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, in partnership with Native communities, wants to help change that.

Streaming Media

American Indians and World War II
Move from World War I and the turbulent 1930s to World War II to learn how the war and onset of the atomic age transformed the lives of Native Americans. While the challenges and opportunities faced by Native Americans paralleled the ones faced by many other Americans, you'll learn how the outcomes proved to be vastly different. And you'll discover Native American heroes of the War.
Native Americans in World War II
Veteran Navajo Code Talkers receive Congressional honors. A veteran Marine, MacDonald recalls being punished for speaking Navajo in boarding school. Hear how his team developed an undecipherable code for surprise landings in the Pacific. Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Perspectives

The Comanche Code Talkers of World War II

Among the allied troops that came ashore in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, were thirteen Comanches in the 4th Infantry Division, 4th Signal Company. Under German fire they laid communications lines and began sending messages in a form never before heard in Europe?coded Comanche. For the rest of World War II, the Comanche Code Talkers played a vital role in transmitting orders and messages in a code that was never broken by the Germans. This book tells the full story of the Comanche Code Talkers for the first time. Drawing on interviews with all surviving members of the unit, their original training officer, and fellow soldiers, as well as military records and news accounts, William C. Meadows follows the group from their recruitment and training to their active duty in World War II and on through their postwar lives up to the present. He also provides the first comparison of Native American code talking programs, comparing the Comanche Code Talkers with their better-known Navajo counterparts in the Pacific and with other Native Americans who used their languages, coded or not, for secret communication. Meadows sets this history in a larger discussion of the development of Native American code talking in World Wars I and II, identifying two distinct forms of Native American code talking, examining the attitudes of the American military toward Native American code talkers, and assessing the complex cultural factors that led Comanche and other Native Americans to serve their country in this way.

Navajo Code Talkers

Describes the role of a select group of Navajo Marines who developed a code based on their own native language that provided a means for secure communications among American forces in the Pacific during World War II.