Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008

CODE TALKERS RECOGNITION ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 23, 2008)

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4544, the Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, introduced by the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Boren).

This legislation honoring the Native American code talkers, who served this country so honorably in the First and Second World Wars, is long overdue.

Mr. Speaker, the history of Native American code talkers is long and honorable. And I'm going to go through a little bit of this, beginning with their striking display of patriotism.

When the First World War broke out, Native Americans were technically not citizens of the United States--hard to believe, really; nevertheless, many enlisted and fought honorably as part of the American Expeditionary Force that helped to defeat the German armies.

In those days, as the technology of warfare changed and the size of the battlefields grew, it was necessary to transmit tactical information over what we would consider rudimentary and very unsecure communications methods that in many cases were easy for the enemy to intercept.

During the Second Battle of the Somme in September of 1918, and later during the Meuse-Argonne campaign in the waning days of the war, Cherokee and Choctaw natives used their own language to communicate tactical information. Since their languages were not related to any European language, the Germans intercepting it were baffled, even though the code itself was rather simple--a tank was a turtle, for example.

Again, in the Second World War, Native Americans signed up in large numbers to fight in both Europe and in the Pacific theater. The best known of these were the Navajos, who worked with the Marines in the Pacific. But considering both wars, code talkers came from as many as 17 different tribes.

Interestingly, the code talkers weren't used much in the European theater until D-day, because it was known that Adolf Hitler had been aware of the code talkers' successful role in World War I and had sent teams of German anthropologists to learn Native American languages before the start of the Second World War. The effort was largely unsuccessful, though, because there were so many different languages and dialects of those languages.

The role of the code talkers was largely unknown until 1968, when the story was declassified. Since then, President Reagan declared a ``Code Talkers Day,'' and in 2001 President Bush presented the Congressional Gold Medal to several Navajo code talkers.

Unfortunately, the bill authorizing that medal did not acknowledge the role of Code Talker heroes from other tribes in the First World War as well as the second.

Mr. Speaker, it has taken nearly a decade to address this oversight, and through the hard work of the gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Granger, and most recently Mr. Boren, bills were introduced to do so in each Congress since the original legislation passed. We are now at the historic point, thanks to Mr. Boren's legislation, that we can move to recognize the other heroes from the other tribes. I urge my colleagues to support this bill enthusiastically.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to reserve the balance of my time.

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