The mysterious Native American code that was never cracked

A lot of what goes in war is wild and loud — guns firing, shells whizzing, grenades exploding. But battles are not won with bullets alone. During a battle, communication is key. Soldiers on the front lines need to let their commanders at the field base know what’s going on. The commanders need to give instructions to the troops who are fighting. How do these messages get across the battlefield? And more importantly, how do you make sure that the enemy won’t intercept the messages and discover your tactics?

It’s all about the code that’s used to encrypt the messages, or make them super hard to understand. During World War II, a special group of US Marines developed a top secret code that was never broken. Read the story of how their code helped America defeat the Japanese in the South Pacific and eventually end the war.

Prologue

Is It the Japanese?

South Pacific Ocean — November 1942

The transport ship was full to the brim with US troops. After having been on board for several weeks, they had finally gotten over their seasickness and found their sea legs. The men were fresh from training and had never fired a gun in battle. Now, they were heading to Guadalcanal, an island in the South Pacific. For months, American troops had been fighting to take control of Guadalcanal from the Japanese. The men on the ship were going to join the fight.

One of the men was Chester Nez from New Mexico. He had volunteered for the Marines just a few months before and hadn’t seen his family since. Up on the deck, Chester gazed out at the flotilla his ship was travelling with. There were destroyers, battleships, cruisers, and more transport ships, all heading to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

Chester spotted his group of 12 friends in a corner and went to join them. While at sea, most of the troops passed the time by playing card games, singing songs, writing letters home to their families, and praying. But not Chester and his friends. The 13 men spent all day practicing the code they had created back in America. Once they reached land, these 13 men would be tasked with sending messages in the code. This was to be the very first time the code would be used in battle.

All the men on board were nervous and afraid. Would they die on Guadalcanal? But Chester and his friends were afraid of something more. They were worried about making mistakes in their coded messages. Their comrades’ lives depended on the messages being coded accurately. The smallest mistake could cost hundreds of lives. And so, they studied and restudied the entire code — all 200 words of it.

They practiced transmitting messages to each other and to their colleagues on other ships in the flotilla. They did all this in secret — none of their shipmates knew about the code. In fact, even the commanding officers knew nothing of this top-secret mission. Only a few admirals in the flotilla were aware of it.