Willard Oliver, Navajo Code Radioman RIP

Adrian Roberts · Oct 27, 2009

Private Willard Oliver - Telegraph

Private Willard Oliver, who died on October 14 aged 88, was one of some 400 Navajo Indians employed by the Americans during the Pacific War to confound the Japanese by transmitting coded radio messages from the front in their Diné language.

Choctaws and Cherokees had carried communications messages in the First World War. A veteran who had been partly brought up on a Navajo reserve in northern New Mexico remembered this, and suggested that the Navajo would be ideally suited for the task in a new theatre; they had a highly complex, unwritten language, thought to be known only to some 30 non-Navajos. Although the idea encountered initial scepticism, a trial was staged in California under simulated combat conditions in early 1942.

This proved that Navajo could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds while the machines of the day took 30 minutes. Major-General Clayton Vogel, commanding the Pacific Fleet's amphibious corps, recommended the recruitment of 200 Navajo, though only 29 were chosen at first to develop a military vocabulary that would be memorised during training.

The "code talkers", as they were called, used a string of seemingly unrelated Navajo words, which they first had to turn into English equivalents. This involved employing only the first letter of the English equivalent in spelling an English word. Thus, the Navajo words wol-la-chee (ant), be-la-sana (apple) and tse-nill (axe) all stood for the letter "a." One way of saying "navy" was tsah (needle) wol-la-chee (ant) ah-keh-di-glini (victor) tsah-ah-dzoh (yucca).

Breaking the codes was made more difficult by most letters having more than one Navajo word to represent them; and not all words were spelt out letter by letter. The code assigned Navajo words to about 450 frequently used military terms that did not exist in their language. Besh-lo (iron fish) meant submarine, while dah-he-tih-hi (hummingbird) stood for a fighter aircraft.

The Navajos' primary task was to send orders and information over radios from the battlefield, but they also had to use semaphore and, occasionally, flashlights. As the 2nd Marine Division set off on its island-hopping progress, knocking out the enemy on the way to Japan, Oliver led a radio platoon in the first echelon, carrying an SCR 300 radio pack on his back and a carbine on his shoulder in the face of constant mortar and machine-gun fire.

Landing on Tarawa in 1943, he kept ducking under the water as he waded ashore under heavy fire while also trying to keep his radio dry. After digging in, it was quiet until sounds from some bushes set off a fusillade; next morning it was discovered that the noise had come from wild pigs.

In the autumn of 1944 he was wounded on Saipan when he emerged from a foxhole as a shell exploded some 10ft away – he woke with a wound in his left thigh and a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder that was to remain there for the rest of his life. When two sailors saw that he was still holding a grenade with the pin removed, they ordered him not to throw it but to hand it over very carefully.

After a month in a hospital ship Oliver was kept in the rear during the attack on Tinian, then landed to send messages pinpointing the location of bombardments and troop movements. One night he and his comrades heard a man being tortured all night, but were not allowed to investigate by their sergeant in case it was a trick. In the morning they found the body of a comrade who had been tortured to death.

On Okinawa, Oliver and five others earned special praise for sending more than 800 vital messages in the first two days of the battle, in which big dogs dispatched to find the Japanese in the caves of Sugar Loaf Hill were followed by heavy bomber and artillery fire before flame-throwers were sent in.

During the heaviest fighting, radios suffered from too much interference to be useful, so he often had to carry messages by foot. On one occasion he and another marine were sent out to repair a telephone wire in the jungle. They became so jumpy after meeting some more pigs that his comrade moved increasingly slowly and then retreated altogether, leaving Oliver to complete the task alone. In managing to keep his nerve he relied on an envelope of Ta-adidiin (sacred corn pollen), with which he used to pray in the early mornings.

The son of a lorry driver and a school cook, Willard Varnell Oliver was born on May 2 1921. After Shiprock Agricultural High School, where he played basketball and football, he became a railroad track repairer in Los Angeles before following his brother Lloyd, one of the first 29 code talkers, into the Marines.

On being discharged with honour in 1945, Oliver returned to work for the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads, then became an ambulance driver and a police officer at Fort Defiance, Arizona. Afterwards he was a construction worker and a carpenter, and helped build a gas pipeline on Navajo land at Black Hat.

The role of the code talkers was classified until the late 1960s, but in recent years it has been the subject of a feature film, numerous documentaries, a novel and a song. Oliver took great pride in having fought for freedom – and often reflected on the fact that during his school days he had constantly been threatened with having to wash out his mouth with soap if he was caught speaking Navajo.

He was an active member of the Navajo Code Talkers' Association, and in 2001 accompanied his brother Lloyd to Washington DC, to be awarded a Congressional gold medal by President George Bush. Four months later he received the Congressional Silver Medal at Window Rock, Arizona.

He was also proud to have had one son who served in the Marines and another who had been in Vietnam; a grandson served in the Army and the Arizona Guard.

Willard Oliver is survived by his wife, Nellie, their six daughters and three sons.

The president of the Navajo nation, Joe Shirley Jr, ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for three days in his honour.
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liverpool annie · Oct 28, 2009

"Hagoonee " ( Good-bye) brave Marines ...... Semper Fidelis Code Talkers
Take your place among the stars and rest peacefully among your ancestors

Willard is the 4th Navajo Code Talker to "fall " this year .... John Brown, Jr. and Thomas Claw passed away on May 20 2009 and May 26 2009 respectively - and Willie Kescoli Begay on June 1 2009 ...

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