Choctaw Code Talkers to receive recognition at Camp Mabry

Email | 5 September 2007 | Greg Ripps

[Arrowhead1952]

Thanks txflake. I can’t believe there hasn’t been an email put out about this to us.

[Arrowhead1952]

I just thought about something. One of my people is 1/4 Choctaw Indian.

[urtax$@work]

can he bring himself to kill him to protect the code?

Movie furthers myth that they were expendable to protect code. According to an interview, the Code Talker thought
that the myth was born from battlefield expediant of escorting CTs by other Marines to prevent mistaken
identity and attendant shoot or capture by
other Marines.

[Racehorse]

Greetings, Dubya;

Can you give me the source for the picture you posted?

I’m preparing a Schedule of Events page for the museum and think I might want to use it, if I can get permission.

Regards and thanks,
R.

[Enchante]

"the Code Talker thought that the myth was born from battlefield expediant of escorting CTs by other Marines to prevent mistaken identity and attendant shoot or capture by other Marines"

Ah, that would make more sense - I've wondered about that whole "kill to protect the code" line of Hollywood drama.

[Fairview]

The picture is on the website of the Choctaw Nation. You should probably approach them for permissions.

[Racehorse]

Thanks.

Got a url?

I’m not lazy, just lazy-eyed, apparently. I’ve looked for both images in this thread on their website and have not stumbled onto them.

Maybe in the morning I’ll see Oklahoma without my UT blinders. :-)

Best,
R.

[RobbyS]

It would have beenb harder during WWII. Command of the language faded away rather quickly after the whites dissolved the nations.

[AZamericonnie]

Funny thing....I grew up the town of Choctaw & never heard of these code talkers. Go figure!

[RobbyS]

Some may have been Chickasaw, because both nations spoke the same language. Notice only two have non-Anglo names. By 1940, I guess that it would have been harder to round up speakers of the language. Knowledge of it quickly faded.

[RobbyS]

No publicity. Almost a hundred years have passed and just now the recognition. Probably some indian leaders dug it up.

[rustbucket]

Who knows. I might not be here if it were not for these Choctaw. My grandfather was a Captain in the 143rd, 36th Division, and served in France during WWI.

[Fairview]

The photo is on the banner on the very top of the home page of the choctawnation.com site. There are several articles about the code talkers, and this url is the starting point: Code Talkers You can look through them yourself. Even if that image isn't in one of the articles, it's on the home page for the tribe so it might well be in their possession or the webmaster will certainly know where he got it from. The contact info for the web design company is at the bottom of the home page.

[VOA]

bump

[SuziQ]

That's just awesome! I didn't even know about the Navajo Code Talkers until about 1998 when our #2 son was doing a report for school, and chose codes as his topic.

I've been reading a lot of Tony Hillerman books, picking up a few Navajo words, and it occurs to me that the Japanese must have been thoroughly confused when hearing the Navajo code talkers for the first time. When Navajo is being spoken, it can sound a bit like Japanese.

[StarCMC]

BTTT

[kenth]

There were Choctaw Code Talkers in WW2. My mother’s first language was Choctaw. By 1940, I imagine most were still speaking Choctaw, as most of my older relatives grew up speaking it. It was probably my generation where it started to fade, but the Choctaw Nation is actively trying to teach it to the younger ones so that it doesn’t die out.

In WW2, there were Hopi, Choctaw, Comanche, Kiowa, Winnebago, Seminole along with the Navajo. History as pertains to Indians is often overlooked, just as too many get their sole information from movies and television.

[RobbyS]

My mother is Chickasaw, and although she was born early in ther last century, she grew up without the language. The Chickasaw nation is smaller and in any case she went to board school with youngsters of other nations. Soi the common language was English. The Chickasaws are also trying to save the language —ours, since we are cousins—but it is hard to plow that field, since so few still speak the lnaguage fluently. Still the effort should be made. The death of any language is a subtraction of human culture.

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

“My old hometown newspaper, The Ponca City News (of Ponca City, OK)”

I delivered that paper as a kid in grade school, when my family lived there for a few years (1954-1960). My father was an X-ray crystallographer who did some work on pipe line corrosion for Continental Oil. At that time, Continental and Cities Service had refineries there. I alway wondered how the town and Kay County in general fared in the Oil Patch downturn in the 1980’s, but never went back to check. Apparently both of the oil companies have been absorbed and reconfigured several times:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citgo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conoco

I recalled we learned a bit about the native tribes under the rubric “Five Civilized Tribes” because their relocation to the Oklahoma Territory was an important ingredient in the state’s history. The other thing I remember about the school system is that it had a great music program one that we learned to appreciate only by the contrast with the mediocre resources committed to musical instruction in other states we moved to afterwards.

[Ciexyz]

Great photo, thanks for posting. The families of these brave volunteers can be very proud of their contributions to our WW I war effort.