Letter: Remembering Native American veterans

Dear Editor:

Recently, it was Memorial day. I’d like to share facts on Native Americans and World War II. There was 21,767 native people in the Army; 1,910 in the Navy; 874 in the Marines; 121 in the Coast Guard; and several hundred Native American women served as nurses. In some of the tribes who served in this wear, there was as high percentage as 70% men ages 18-50 years old served.

I’d also like to say native American “Code Talkers” helped win the war. Code talkers had to have knowledge of not only speaking their native language but knowledge to her operate handheld radio and phones and both wire and radio equipment. Native code talkers were given messages in English and they translated and sent them to other code talkers where the messages were logged in a book.

When kids were forced to leave their patients and villages to attend the Indian boarding schools, it was to break their knowledge of each native tribe language and culture. When they got to these schools, they were told not to speak their native language ever again. That’s all most of these kids knew to speak. If they were caught speaking their native language, they were punished badly.

They were starved, beatened and raped by the church-ran schools. Each school had a graveyard.

On the web, I asked to show me “tiny handcuffs” used to drag little kids away from family villages. There is an old quote used by a native American World War II soldier, “The same language they were forbidden to speak is the same lanaguage that saved this nation.”

Johnny Mott

Sikeston, Missouri