Advocates: Honor all 'code talkers' (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Advocates: Honor all 'code talkers'

Activists and lawmakers say American Indians' efforts in World War II
should be honored.

By JANE NORMAN
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
September 23, 2004
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040923/NEWS11/409230358/1001

Washington, D.C. - Hollywood and the publishing industry have chronicled
how Navajo "code talkers" foiled the enemy by sending radio messages in
their tribal language during World War II.

Much less known is that American Indians from at least 18 other tribes,
including the Meskwaki Nation in Iowa, played the same crucial role on
the battlefield - and many of them carried the classified military
secrets to their graves.

Now American Indian advocates and members of Congress - including Iowa's
two senators - are seeking recognition for code talkers such as the
eight young Meskwaki men who enlisted in the Iowa National Guard in
January 1941. They trained at Camp Dodge in Johnston and in Louisiana,
then were shipped overseas with the 168th Infantry, 34th Division, for
grim and difficult duty.

[SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER - Without recognition: A photo from a
Marshalltown newspaper shows eight Meskwaki men who enlisted in the
Iowa National Guard in January 1941 and were being trained as "code
talkers" during World War II. From left are Mike Wayne Wabaunasee,
Edward Benson, Dewey Roberts, Frank Sanache, Judy Wayne Wabaunasee
(reclining) and Melvin Twin. Standing, from left, are Willard Sanache
and Dewey Youngbear. American Indian advocates and members of Congress
are now seeking recognition for all the code talkers.]

Robin Lee Roberts of Montour told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee at
a Wednesday hearing how the Meskwaki were used as scouts in lead
assaults, carrying heavy backpacks and radios. They fought through the
deserts of North Africa and the mountains of Italy, targeted for
capture so the enemy could try to break the code.

"When they came back, they were scarred, mentally and physically," said
Roberts, whose uncle, Dewey Roberts, was one of the code talkers. "I
think it's time they give them their national recognition."

Samson Keahna of Tama, another Meskwaki, said the veterans settled back
into their lives in Iowa and said nothing about their service, even to
their wives.

"Instead, they lived humbly among us as friends, brothers, uncles,
fathers and grandfathers," Keahna said.

Navajo code talkers were featured in the movie "Windtalkers," and 29 of
them were awarded congressional gold medals in 1999. But both of Iowa's
senators, Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Tom Harkin, are
pushing hard for legislation that would award congressional gold medals
to the rest of the code talkers as well. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Ia.,
also has introduced legislation in the House.

The Iowa state Senate and House both have passed resolutions urging
Congress to award the medals, symbolic of the highest expression of
national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions.

Greg Pyle, chief of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said military
leaders realized American Indian languages were useful as codes because
they were based on a different linguistic root and syntax from European
languages.

"You couldn't go anywhere to learn about them since they were oral
languages," he said. "In fact, they were the perfect languages for
transmission of secrets."

According to a printed statement by Charles Chibitty, a Comanche code
talker too ill to attend the hearing, an example of a message radioed
from one Comanche to another may have been, "A turtle is coming down
the hedgerow. Get that stovepipe and shoot him."

A "turtle" was a tank and a "stovepipe" a bazooka, since there were no
equivalent words in Comanche.

Comanches used the word "sewing machine" for a machine gun because of
the noise made by the weapon. Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was called
"posah-tai-vo," which means "crazy white man."

William Meadows, an assistant professor of anthropology at Southwest
Missouri State University in Springfield, said most code talkers had
attended schools where the use of their languages was banned and their
culture discredited.

Nonetheless they were eager to serve, and none of the American Indian
languages or codes used by the armed forces is known to ever have been
broken, he said.

The eight Meskwaki code talkers, among 52 Meskwaki to serve in World War
II, were brothers Frank and Willard Sanache, Dewey Roberts, Edward
Benson, Melvin Twin, Dewey Youngbear and brothers Judy Wayne Wabaunasee
and Mike Wayne Wabaunasee.

Frank Sanache, the last survivor, died a month ago at 86.

Their experiences are related in an article by Mary Bennett, special
collections coordinator at the State Historical Society of Iowa, in the
current issue of Iowa Heritage Illustrated.

Bennett writes that several code talkers were captured by the Italians
and Germans, and they not only suffered beatings and near starvation
but also faced racial prejudice. Youngbear tried three times to escape
and died in 1948 of tuberculosis contracted in the POW camp.

Keahna, himself a Vietnam veteran, told senators that all code talkers
deserve the same recognition as the Navajo. "Time is of the essence,"
he said. "Each of the men who served as a code talker deserves to know
that the nation they served honors their sacrifices."