Valor Friday

John Kinsel Sr

This week brought sad news of the death of John Kinsel Sr. He was one of the last surviving Navajo Code Talker. The Code Talkers weren’t all Navajo, but they were the most famous. Some of the languages other than Navajo that were used were Lakota, Meskwaki, Mohawk, Comanche, Tlingit, Hopi, Cree, and Crow. Code Talkers most famously served in the Pacific War, but they saw service in all theaters of the conflict.

If you’re not familiar with the Code Talkers, it’s a brilliant and fascinating bit of wartime intelligence cryptography. How could you create a code that was indecipherable to the enemy? You could use simple substitution cyphers, but those were easy to break. You could build fancy cryptography machines like the Nazis’ Enigma, but those were subject to capture and reproduction. Both of these systems also took time. Decoding a message one letter at a time, while secure, wasn’t something that could be quickly relayed on an active battlefield. With the advent of man portable radio telegraphs (i.e. a walkie-talkie), war planners had to come up with something.

What they came up with was to use Native languages. Boys like Kinsel, eager to serve their nation, who had grown up speaking languages like Navajo (largely undocumented and totally unknown outside of a relatively small part of the American southwest), were pressed into service as cryptographers and radio operators. Using their native languages instead of complicated ciphers. The only training on the use of their language they would need is to make up words for things their language had no word for, such as “submarine”, which was called an “iron fish,” and abbreviations and related keywords.

Navajo is a complex language, completely unwritten at the time of WWII, and was unintelligible by anyone without extensive training and experience. It was estimated that fewer than 30 non-Navajo in the world could understand it. The Navajo Code that the first group of Code Talkers came up with was simple for them to learn. They memorized all these words and phrases, never taking the written training materials outside the classroom. Despite the simplicity, untrained Navajo wouldn’t even be able to understand the code’s

Once you knew those basic additions, a soldier or Marine could be sent into the field. With another Code Talker on the other end of the radio, realtime intelligence and troop movements could be reported as fast as they could translate. Which is much faster than any system available at the time. The Code Talkers could speak in plain language on an open radio network with zero fear that the enemy would be able to decipher it.

The Code Talkers became invaluable in the field. They returned home after the war, and were largely forgotten. The whole Navajo Code was classified until 1968. Since then the word has gotten out. Nic Cage was in a pretty decent film about them in 2002 called Windtalkers. In 2000, the original first 29 Navajo Code Talkers (who developed the unbreakable spoken code) were given Congressional Gold Medals, the other roughly 200 who qualified as Navajo Code Talkers were awarded Silver Medals. These are the highest award of the Legislative Branch, and rank equal with the Presidential Medal of Freedom as the highest civil honors of the United States Government. In 2008, the honor was extended to all Native Code Talkers (Gold Medals to the tribes with Silver Medals for individual Code Talkers or their next of kin). So far 33 tribes have been so recognized.

Marine Times has the story on the passing of Mr. Kinsel;

John Kinsel Sr., one of the last remaining Navajo Code Talkers who transmitted messages during World War II based on the tribe’s native language, has died. He was 107.

Navajo Nation officials in Window Rock announced Kinsel’s death on Saturday.

Tribal President Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-staff until Oct. 27 at sunset to honor Kinsel.

“Mr. Kinsel was a Marine who bravely and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the greatest responsibility as a Navajo Code Talker,” Nygren said in a statement Sunday.

With Kinsel’s death, only two Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: Former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.

Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the Marines to serve as Code Talkers during the war, transmitting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.

They confounded Japanese military cryptologists during World War II and participated in all assaults the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima.

The Code Talkers sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications crucial to the war’s ultimate outcome.

Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.

He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite Code Talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982 and the Aug. 14 holiday honors all the tribes associated with the war effort.

The day is an Arizona state holiday and Navajo Nation holiday on the vast reservation that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.

Godspeed, Marine. Semper Fi

Category: Historical, Marines, Valor, We Remember, WWII