Talk:Code Talkers

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Contents

[edit] Broken page move: Codetalkers

Moved from Wikipedia:Village pump on Saturday, September 13th, 02003.

User:David Martland has moved the codetalkers article to code talkers using copy-and-paste, leaving the edit history behind. What is the way to fix this? —Paul A 06:32, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The procedure is explained at Wikipedia:How to rename (move) a page#Fixing cut and paste moves but can only be done by admins, which is what I believe Hephaestos is doing right now. Angela 06:38, 7 Sep 2003 (UTC)


I find it extremely hard to beleive the japanese did not break this code. its possible they broke it and just didnt use their intel very effectively, for example if there was a lag of several days or more in between message interception, decryption, and decision making. considering that the japanese were able to successfully break far more sophisticated codes, I suspect this story has more than a bit of folk myth/hollywoodism mixed into it. especially considering that its now politically correct to heap praise on the formerly unrecognized native americans who participated in the project. Id like to see some sources, preferably japanese military, admitting they never broke it. Vroman 05:14, 20 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Lieutenant General Seizo Arisue (the Japanese chief of intelligence) later on made it known that while other American codes were broken, the Navajo code was not. --Bletch 19:43, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This is suffering from broken links G Evans 4 nov 04

I recently read that on at least a hunderd occasions the German army in Russia used a something similiar during WW2 to call off an attack. Since the message could only be transmitted to an isolated unit via radio, the radio operator spoke Swabian, which the other operator understood but not the Russians who intercepted the message. ps im full of it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.78.90.158 (talk)

[edit] Many More photos to be added

[edit] Basque

I have heard several times that among the codetalkers there were Basque speakers. Can somebody confirm?

I find Asunto: Code Talker that mentions:

  • Battle of Guadalcanal
  • Book Los españoles en la guerra del Pacífico by Daniel Arasa
  • planned by Transmissions Captain Frank D. Carranza, son of Basque immigrants who noticed 60 bilingual Basque-descent marines at the transmissions training centert at San Francisco.
  • Tests in Basque and North American languages start (1942) between San Diego and the Pacific headquarters
  • Admiral Nimitz had as Basque translators lieutenants Nemesio Aguirre, Fernández Bakaicoa and Juanna
  • To complicate things there was a schedule of languages:
    • Monday Basque
    • Tuesday Navajo
    • Wednesday Iroquois
    • Thursday Comanche
    • Friday Basque
    • Saturday Mix
    • Sunday Navajo
  • Some examples of Basque messages.
  • After Guadalcanal, it was difficult to find more codetalkers so Navajo was replacing the rest of languages.

In http://www.thememoryhole.org/foi/caselogs/dod-2002.xls :

  • 899
  • 02-F-0874
  • OIARZABAL, PEDRO
  • REQ ACCESS TO RESTRICTED RECORDS RELATED TO AMERICANS (OF BASQUE ORIGIN, I.E. FROM SPAIN OR FRANCE; BASQUE-FRENCH, OR BASQUE SPANISH) WHO SERVED IN WWII; USE OF BASQUE LANGUAGE TO TRANSMIT SENSITIVE MILITARY INFO DURING WWII (PACIFIC CAMPAIGN) BASQUE LANG

--Error 01:21, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

It seems that everybody is quoting Daniel Arasa's book. --Error (talk) 00:06, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Philip "Calcium Hydroxide" Johnston

What is the source of the nickname "Calcium Hydroxide" in 'Philip "Calcium Hydroxide" Johnston'? --Amir E. Aharoni 15:22, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

This was the only page on the internets with it, so I removed it. Random vandalism, presumably, tho I don't feel like hunting thru the logs to find out who added it, and what other pages they hit as well.--Severinus 22:53, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. --Amir E. Aharoni 07:12, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German anthropologists among the Native American tribes

Recent addition by unnamed IP address: " It can be noted that at that time:the Navajo asked these "white peaple", which differed from other Americans, of their intensions and were skeptical. Therefore, knowing of other Indain code used in warfare and stronge sence of pride, the Navajo strongly encouraged these 'Anrhropolgits' to leave immidiatly(These contacts with the 'outsiders' were reported to the U.S Goverment and/or Military during the war)." Among the spelling and grammar mishaps, there's a good story. Needs a reference, though. Binksternet 01:54, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I reverted the edit about the time you entered this. I took it out because I wasn't sure if it was legit, and the spelling and grammar was so bad it could have been a joke edit. Has anyone heard this story? Any evidence to support the claims? -- wrp103 (Bill Pringle) (Talk) 03:32, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Bill, I agree with your delete action; I saved the text here anticipating the originator's ability to find a reference. I haven't heard the story before but if true, it's worth inclusion. Binksternet 04:03, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expanded article

Perhaps the article could be expanded to include other occurences of usage of a lesser known language or dialect in order to obfuscate a message. Finland used some Finnish dialects and Ostrobothnian Swedish-language dialects to fool Soviet signals intelligence during the Winter War and Continuation War to great success (English-language sources for example W. Trotter's The Winter War). 88.148.192.117 13:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

I would have no problem with a "See also" entry pointing that an article about that, but the term "Code Talker" refers specifically to Native Americans. -- wrp103 (Bill Pringle) (Talk) 13:10, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I support the idea of a paragraph about other instances of code talking besides Native Americans in the US military. What other page would such a story belong on? This is it. Binksternet 13:48, 19 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] The movie's fabrications

I think we should take all mention of the movie Windtalkers out of the article's body and put all that stuff in one section where its fabrications can be addressed. A few relevant things from the Windtalkers's "Criticism" section could be brought here. Binksternet 01:34, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Since there's only the one mention of the movie until the end of the article, I think it certainly could be removed from the top, but i disagree that there should be a large discussion of the film in this article. As you point out, there is already an article for the film with a substantial section on criticisms of it, and that's the appropriate place for it. I think a simple mention that a film was made, that it was fictional, and that it didn't accurately portray the true story of code talkers in WWII is all that's necessary here, and if people want more, they will go to the article for the film. norm77 13:45, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. Binksternet 15:26, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
One caveat is that people who only know about Code Talkers through the movie (or from others who have seen the movie) may have false impressions. This article should correct those false impressions, although it probably shouldn't be in a "this is a list of what was wrong about Windtalkers"-type way. Addressing the misperceptions just in the Windtalkers article isn't sufficient, because by the time people come here, they may not know that those misperceptions originally came from the movie Windtalkers. -- 128.104.112.85 (talk) 23:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the sentence involving code talker bodyguards should be edited because it misrepresents a critic's opinion as fact. [2] Title XI, section 1102 a10B Spider96 —Preceding comment was added at 09:55, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki for the Blind

I am 19 years old and blind. I am interested in adding relevant items to wiki that help the blind "visualize" and grasp the subjects at hand. I love the tradition of oral storytelling. I have added a link to a radio story by The American Storyteller.--Trgwilson (talk) 05:30, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible copyvio: Which page copied the other?

Hey folks,

Sections of this article read a lot like this page: [3] Did Wikipedia copy from samuelholiday, or did samuelholiday copy from Wikipedia? If they copied Wikipedia, that's fine, but they need to acknowledge Wikipedia. If we copied them, we need to remove all the copyvio elements (or substantially rewrite them). The sections are "Use of Navajo", "Cryptographic properties", and "Post-war Recognition". Thoughts? --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I'll be posting something similar to Talk:Joe Kieyoomia, as the article is virtually identical to the samuelholiday one. --Deathphoenix ʕ 18:20, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

The key here is the differences: the article says "words to represent letters" and the external link says "letters to spell out words" - so let's look through the article history to find if it was letters/words sometime in the past. Sure enough, it used to have that wording. Now you just have to work around to find some spot where the Wiki article is identical to the external article, that is a pretty good indication that someone has copied the wiki-text for themselves without giving a credit.
That seems to be the case here, I suspect the external site was copied from Wikipedia sometime between 02Aug06 and 06Dec06 - I'm not going to try to pin it down any more than that.
NB that I have a nifty little piece of software that lets me find phrases ultra-quick, I didn't walk back through the entire article history. :) Franamax (talk) 18:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks for the extra info. I'll contact the necessary Wikipedia PR folks who can contact this web site to provide proper attribution. Given the respect I have for the web site and its "owner", I hope they'll be gentle. :-) --Deathphoenix ʕ 19:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Good work in finding which old WP version matches the external one, but that doesn't quite prove who copied whom. If the article had been created or substantially rewritten by one editor in 2006, it would still look suspiciously like a copyvio. However, the previous history shows that dozens of editors built it over several years. I agree that the WP article is clearly original, and thus any copies elsewhere must be derivatives. Certes (talk) 21:42, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article name change

Why the article name change? Navajos are not the only American Indian tribe who were codetalkers not the first ... The article should be "Code Talkers" so as to be all inclusive ... otherwise I'll need to create a Choctaw code talkers article. Rob (talk) 22:16, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. This was a unilateral move by a new editor who didn't discuss ahead of time. I'm restoring the article to the way it was. Binksternet (talk) 22:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
Shoot. The system prevented me from moving the article to Code talker like it was before. I was able to move it to Code Talkers instead, which doesn't wholly satisfy. The capital 'T' is leftover from the formal name of "Navajo Code Talkers" and the pluralization isn't the way it was before, though I can't see any benefit from having just one code talker... Binksternet (talk) 22:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
I think the plural is better, if for no other reason than that code talkers had to work in groups of two or more! Is it possible (desirable?) to move this to Code talkers with lower case "t"? Robert Greer (talk) 23:20, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
No, I just tried and the system prevented me. Binksternet (talk) 19:36, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
You can file a request at WP:RPM to get the page moved to the right title. Tell the story briefly and an admin can sort it out. Franamax (talk) 21:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
I moved the page. I think the problem was that there already was a page "Code talker" that linked to "Code Talkers". -- wrp103 (Bill Pringle) (Talk) 01:25, 3 April 2008 (UTC)