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A blast from the past. Or, for the WW2 history buffs.
https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Japanese-try-to-decipher-the-famous-Navajo-code-by-capturing-a-Navajo-native-during-WWII
Try the link below (if that link doesn't work)....
Why didn't the Japanese try to decipher the famous "Navajo" code by capturing a Navajo native during WWII?
Aloha, Mark
https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Japanese-try-to-decipher-the-famous-Navajo-code-by-capturing-a-Navajo-native-during-WWII
Try the link below (if that link doesn't work)....
Why didn't the Japanese try to decipher the famous "Navajo" code by capturing a Navajo native during WWII?
Erik Painter
They did try. And they did capture Navajo men. However, they were unsuccessful in using them to decipher the code. The reason was simple. The Navajo Code was a code that used Navajo. It was not spoken Navajo. To a Navajo speaker, who had not learned the code, a Navajo Code talker sending a message sounds like a string of unconnected Navajo words with no grammar.It was incomprehensible. So, when the Japanese captured a Navajo man named Joe Kieyoomia in the Philippines he could not really help them even though they tortured him. It was nonsense to him.The Navajo Code had to be learned and memorized. It was designed to transmit a word by word or letter by letter exact English message. They did not just chat in Navajo. That could have been understood by a Navajo speaker, but more importantly translation is never, ever exact. It would not transmit precise messages. There were about 400 words in the Code. The first 31 Navajo Marines created it with help of one non-Navajo speaker officer who knew cryptography. . The first part was to transmit English letters. For each English letter there were three (or sometimes just two) possible Navajo words. In this way English words could be spelled out with a substitution code. The alternate words were randomly switched around. So, for English B there were the Navajo words for Badger, Bear and Barrel. That is: nahashchʼidí, shash, and tóshjeeh. Or the letter A was Red Ant, Axe, or Apple. In Navajo that is: wóláchííʼ, tsénił or bilasáana. The English letter D was: bįįh=deer, and łééchąąʼí =dog, and chʼįįdii= bad spiritual substance (devil).For the letter substitution part of the Code the word "bad" could be spelled out a number of ways. To a regular Navajo speaker it would sound like: "Bear, Apple, Dog". Or other times it could be " Barrel, Red Ant, Bad Spirit (devil)". Other times it could be "Badger, Axe, Deer". As you can see, for just this short English word there are many possibilities. To a Navajo speaker, all versions are nonsense. It gets worse for a Navajo speaker because normal Navajo conjugates in complex ways (ways an English or Japanese speaker would never dream of). These lists of words has no indicators of how they are connected. It is utterly non-grammatical.Then to speed it up and make it even harder to break they substituted Navajo words for common military words that were often used in short military messages. None were just translations. A few you could, if you were fluent and had the time would could figure out, for example, a Lieutenant was "one silver bar". A Major was Gold Oak Leaf. Other things were less obvious like a Battleship was Whale. A Mine Sweeper was a Beaver.Because the Navajo Marines had memorized the Code there was no code book to capture. There was no machine to capture either. They could transmit it over open radio waves. They could decode it in a few minutes as opposed to the 30 minutes that other code systems at the time took. And, no Navajo speaker who had not learned the Code could make any sense out of it. The Japanese had no published texts on Navajo. They did suspect it was Navajo. That is why they tortured Joe Kieyoomia. But, he could not make sense of it. For Japanese even writing the language down would be very hard. It has lots of sounds that are not in Japanese or in English. It is hard to tell where some words end or start because the glottal stop is a common consonant. Frequency analysis would have been hard because they did not use a single word for each letter. And some words stood for words instead of letter. That task of breaking it was very hard.Here is an example of a coded message:béésh łigai naaki joogii gini dibé tsénił áchį́į́h bee ąą ńdítį́hí joogi béésh łóó' dóó łóóʼtsohWhen translated directly from Navajo into English it is:
"SILVER TWO BLUE JAY CHICKEN HAWK SHEEP AXE NOSE KEY BLUE JAY IRON FISH AND WHALE. "
That means: "CAPTAIN, THE DIVE BOMBER SANK THE SUBMARINE AND BATTLESHIP."
"Two silver bars" =captain. Blue jay= the. Chicken hawk= dive bomber. Iron fish = sub. Whale= battleship. "Sheep, Axe Nose Key"=sank. The only normal use of a Navajo word is the word for "and" which is "dóó ". For the same message the word "sank" would be spelled out another way on a different day. For example "snake, apple, needle, kettle".
Here is a verbal example of how the code sounded. The code sent below sounded like this to someone who did not know the code: "sheep eyes nose deer destroy tea mouse turkey onion sick horse 362 bear".
Aloha, Mark
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