GALLUP, N.M. — It was Sept. 17, 1944. Eight young Hopi men thought about their families and peaceful villages in the high desert of Arizona — thousands of miles away — and prayed for a last time before they boarded ships and joined their units with the U.S. Army's 223rd Infantry Regiment, 81st Infantry Division, on the shores of Angaur Island, Palau.
The mission was to take over the island and provide the U.S. military with a strategic location in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. But the Japanese intelligence had been so good at breaking military codes that the mission depended on the Hopi men to use their unique language to confuse the enemy, U.S. Army Maj. Gen. with the 81st Regional Support Command Gill P. Beck said.
"What we found in WWII is that no matter how strong we were, we could not create a code that could not be decoded (by the Japanese)," Beck told an audience that included family members of the Hopi Code Talkers who gathered at the first official Hopi Code Talker Memorial at the Hopi Veterans Memorial Center in Kykotsmovi on April 23. "That prevented us from being successful in our missions. ... If they can destroy that code, they can destroy that unit."
The 223rd Infantry Regiment landed on the island and quickly advanced through the jungle. Maj. Gen. Paul Muller, who was on the mother ship several miles away, was in charge of the mission. Historic records from the 81st Infantry Division conclude that "sensitive information regarding the landings would have been sent to him using code talkers due to the need for secure real time actionable intelligence."
The mission lasted for three days of brutal confrontations between forces in and around the island. Muller's ship was attacked the morning of the 18th, and this battle had one of the highest number of casualties during World War II, according to historic records. But the U.S. forces circled the island and the Japanese base and successfully gained control. This takeover contributed to the final victory in the Pacific and eventually the successful end of World War II, Beck said.
"Your families, they contributed to the success of this operation," Beck said. "What it must have been to them, to depend on the Code Talkers?"
More than 60 years later, Travis Yaiva might have wondered the same. Then, in his late 80s, quietly sitting in his living room in Bacavi Village, the Hopi man might have remembered the takeover of the island, the Hopi words he and his comrades used to encode the operation, and the thousands of lives that were lost during the battle.
He might have questioned the motives of the war and the outcome. No one will ever know.
Yaiva passed about three years ago and he never talked about what happened during the time he served, not even during his final days, at the care of his daughter Dolores Yaiva, she said. That is one of the reasons Beck's account of the battle of Angaur Island provided some sort of closure for many of the relatives of the Hopi Code Talkers. They are all gone and most never talked about the war.
"They were not proud of it," Dolores Yaiva, 58, said, fighting tears, during the Hopi Code Talker memorial. "This was emotional. I never knew what they went through. With understanding of what they went through it hurts now."
Eugene Talas, director of the Hopi Veteran Affairs, said war is against the Hopi tradition. This is why the Hopi men who were drafted during World War II might have struggled tremendously during their service.
"You have to remember, with our tradition, with the Hopi, we don't like to take pride in military accomplishments," he said.
In the Hopi tradition, the men only fought to defend their land and families, but never went beyond the boundaries of their sacred land in search of trouble. There's a reason the early Hopi villages were built on top of high mesas and the people lived peaceful agricultural lives. They did not want any trouble.
"We shy away from the word 'warrior,'" Talas said.
When the Hopi Code Talkers returned to their peaceful villages they might have gone through cleansing ceremonies and burned or buried their military outfits and medals as part of the cleansing process, Talas said. That is another reason it has been difficult to identify all the Code Talkers. They did not keep records, perhaps in an attempt to forget that time of their lives. Recently, two more Hopi Code Talkers were identified, totaling 10.
The 223rd Infantry Regiment included eight Hopi Code Talkers: Charles T. Lomakema, of Shugopavi; Perry Honani Sr., of Shungopavi; Franklin Shupla, of Tewa; Percival Navenma, of Mishungnovi; Floyd Dann Sr., of Moenkopi; Travis S. Yaiva, of Bacavi; Frank Chapella, of Tewa; and Warren R. Kooyaquaptewa, of Tewa.
Orville Wadsworth, of Shungopavi, and Rex Pooyouma, of Hotevilla Village, both members of the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, were recently identified.
Talas said after Wadsworth passed his family found a box containing a document that was folded and so old that it was almost glued together. It had to be pulled apart with a pair of tweezers. When they opened it, it had a diagram that included a communication pattern used by the 5th Bomber Command, 5th Air Force. This and other documents were sent to the experts for review and they confirmed Wadsworth had been a code talker. He became the last to be identified.
Both Wadsworth and Pooyouma were members of a secret Native American Code Talker communications network in the Pacific campaigns and served with the 5th Air Force.
Pooyouma, however, provided a few anecdotes about the time of war before he passed in 2010.
"He talked about it, little stories," his daughter Lauri Charley said. "He said that because he and Orville were short, of small structure, they would sit in the back of the plane, operating the guns. It was a small cubicle where they had to sit."
Charley said that when her father returned from the Pacific, he tried to go back to a normal life, resuming his traditional duties. He was a farmer and a moccasin maker. He made moccasins for his people until he was in his 90s.
"I'm very proud of my dad, very honored that he was one of the men," she said, adding it was good to hear about the history of the war, but the full picture may never be completely understood because those who lived through it are gone.
Information from: Gallup Independent, http://www.gallupindependent.com