In World War Ⅱ, over 400 Native American soldiers transmitted sensitive wartime messages in their indigenous languages, using them as a code that the Axis Powers could never crack, though Indigenous code talkers were also used in World War Ⅰ. The majority of Native soldiers who used their Indigenous language as code were Navajo speakers. Navajo is a complex language in the Athabaskan language family, and like many Native American languages, has no alphabet. This gave the Allied Forces a great advantage as there was no written content that could help enemies to decipher their codes. The Navajo people were typically native to the Southwestern region of the United States. The employment of Navajo codetalkers began with its first cohort consisting of twenty-nine people in May of 1942. By the end of World War Ⅱ, the Marine Corps employed 540 Navajos for service, about 69-77% of whom served as code talkers. The code talkers used words that translate in English to “Iron Fish”, which referred to submarines, “Turtle”, which referred to tanks, and the code used hundreds of Navajo words. 

 

So, in this room, it is up to the delegates as military officials to build plans and respond to threats that arise on the battlefield of the second World War, armed with Navajo Language as a powerful, and secret weapon. Remember this matter is quite literally a matter of life and death, and the results of the second World War will forever change and determine the course of history for the world. Good luck!