Remember Nicolas Cage movie Windtalkers?

[Zauriel]

Yeah, this is the Navajo code from Windtalkers movie.

I recall that in the real life, when the Japanese captured a Navajo soldier who wasn't a code talker, he had no idea what those Navajo words he heard mean figuratively. he just knew the literal translations of Navajo words.

Sources:

In-depth Navajo Code talkers' dictionaries which show examples of Navajo language, their literal translations and their figurative meanings.

http://www.lapahie.com/Navajo_Code_Talker_Original_Code.cfm

http://www.americanindiansource.com/indianed/codediction.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-4.htm


The website about the former Navajo captive's story

http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/articles/navcode.htm

"I told them I was Navajo," Kieyoomia says, his crystal-blue eyes turning defiant behind a wrinkled face and a pair of bifocals as he sat outside his remote home on the Navajo reservation and told his war story.

"They didn't believe me," he says, shaking his head. "The only thing they understood about Americans was black and white. I guess they didn't know about Indians."

After months of beatings, Kieyoomia says, the Japanese accepted his claim to Navajo ancestry. But he says the torture that followed was worse.

"One day two Japanese women visited me," he says. "They wrote Navajo words in English and asked what they meant. So, I told them: "This means bird, this means turtle, this means water."

http://codetalkers.info/

Many Americans who staked their lives on the success of the Navajo view the Code Talkers' contributions to the war effort as nothing short of monumental. One Marine Corps signal officer summed up the situation after the war: "Were it not for the Navajo Code Talkers, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima and other places".


Speaking their native language, that the Japanese could not decode, Navajo soldiers were instrumental in U.S. Marine victories in the Pacific during World War II, relaying vital information between the front lines and headquarters.

http://david-kahn.com/articles-navajo-windtalkers.htm

Electrical scramblers that turned talk into incomprehensible, Donald Duck-like sounds for transmission existed during World War II. But they were bulky and delicate, not suitable for front-line work and not as secure as the Navajo system: the Germans cracked the A-3 transatlantic scrambler and eavesdropped on some Roosevelt-Churchill conversations. The electronic sigsaly system, which was absolutely secure, took up as much space as a freight car. Today, cellular telephones encrypt using tiny chips.

But during the Pacific war, with such technology not available, the Navajo codetalkers provided secure, authenticated oral communications. They were first deployed on Sept. 18, 1942, on Guadalcanal. In that island-hopping war, they served as well on Bougainville, New Britain, Saipain, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. During the first 48 hours of the Iwo Jima landing, the signal officer of the 5th Marine Division operated six Navajo radio nets, whose code talkers sent more than 800 messages without error. It was a code talker message that reported that the Marines had reached the summit of Mt. Suribachi, where the famous flag-raising took place. The Japanese never interpreted a single message.

Code talkers saved American lives. President Bush thanked them at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on July 26, 2001, at which they were awarded Congressional Gold Medals. The National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Md., has a code talkers exhibit, as will the soon-to-be-opened International Spy Museum in downtown Washington. ?Windtalkers? properly honors them. Its conclusion about the code is right: ?Like the American spirit, it was never broken.?

Other Navajo Code Talkers history websites

http://www.lapahie.com/NavajoCodeTalker.cfm

http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/history/usmccode.htm

http://bingaman.senate.gov/code_talkers/code/code.html

http://raphael.math.uic.edu/~jeremy/crypt/contrib/lopez2.html