Code talkers still await recognition

By Ron Jackson
Published: November 11, 2006

American Indian code talkers in World War I and World War II are credited with saving countless lives by using their native languages to ensure secrecy in the communications for the U.S. Armed Forces.

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Choctaw, Comanche, Navajo, Seminole, Pawnee, Kiowa, Cherokee, Cheyenne and Sioux played vital roles by relaying messages in their native languages.

Now in Congress sits the Code Talkers Recognition Act, which is designed to honor these American soldiers, who many feel should have been honored long ago, with Congressional Gold Medals.

The U.S. Senate passed the bill unanimously Sept. 20. But the bill is languishing in the House, stalled in a committee and endangered by the dwindling days left in the session. If it isn’t approved by the House, the bill will have to find new life next year.

Choctaw Chief Greg Pyle vows to crusade for the bill in Washington until it passes.

“If it does not pass, we will be back up there,” Pyle said Thursday at the premier of a code talker exhibit at the Oklahoma History Center. “We will not forget. We will not give up.”

Pyle’s fight is fitting.

In October 1918, near a battlefield in northern France, Choctaw soldiers Solomon Louis and Mitchell Bobb were overheard talking in their native language by a passing officer. The officer paused.

The Germans boasted often of how they continually broke the Allied codes by tapping into telephone lines. The American officer quickly came to one conclusion: Who could break codes spoken in Choctaw?

A company of eight fluent Choctaw speakers soon was formed, and the tide of battle shifted in favor of the Allied Forces. One month later the war ended. Back home in Oklahoma, news of their deeds went far beyond their words.

The Department of Defense again turned to American Indian warriors in 1940, recruiting code talkers from the tribes of the Comanche and Navajo people. These organized bands of code talkers already were in place by the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Fourteen Comanche code talkers later stormed the beaches of Normandy on DDay, June 6, 1944, and delivered invaluable service. Medicine Park’s Charles Chibitty, a 5-foot-6, 135-pounder, was among those who poured onto the beach under a fierce hail of artillery fire.

“Someone asked me what I was afraid of most,” Chibitty said in a 1998 interview with The Oklahoman.“Was I afraid of dying? No. That was something we had already accepted. But we landed in deeper water than anticipated. A lot of boys drowned.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Chibitty was the last living Comanche Code Talker. He died July 21, 2005, in Tulsa. Before his passing, he enjoyed a small degree of celebrity for his service as a code talker — a status that eluded most of his comrades.

“My only regret is that the boys aren’t here to get what we’re getting now,” he once said. “That’s recognition.”

Descendants of the code talkers would like to see that injustice corrected.

“I didn’t know my father was a code talker until I was well into my 30s,” said James Edwards Jr., whose father served as one of the original Choctaw code talkers in World War I. “They were told not to talk about it, and they were very honorable men. So they didn’t.

“It would make me very happy to see Congress vote to give medals in honor of our fathers.”

Pawnee tribal member Henry Stoneroad Sr. is one of the few soldiers living in Oklahoma who would be able to receive his medal in person.

Stoneroad talked in Pawnee with fellow tribe member Enoch Jim as their platoons passed one another on an island road in the Pacific.

An officer overheard their conversation and asked, “You guys speak the same language?”

The officer then ordered Jim, who had seen the enemy position, to later relay their location in Pawnee after his platoons advanced.

“There were about 150 of the enemy,” Stoneroad recalled. “We had two platoons of 80, and we would have walked right into them. It would have been a disaster. Instead, we went around them, and they never even knew we were there.”

Jim has since died.

The irony of the code talkers isn’t lost on Stoneroad, now 86. He attended the Pawnee Indian School in Pawnee.

“We were punished for speaking our Pawnee language,” Stoneroad said. “Many times, I found myself eating a government bar of soap for speaking Pawnee. But my mother (Sarah Chapman Stoneroad) and grandmother (Fanny Eaves) always told me to never forget my Pawnee language. They said someday you will need to use that language to save lives.

“They were right.”