AZ: The History of Arizona podcast

Arizona celebrated V-E and V-J Day along with the rest of the country. But as the veterans started coming home, it was an Arizona senator who helped lead the charge to make sure there was a place for them.

Today the Navajo Code Talkers are one of the most famous stories to come out of the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. However, following the victory they helped come to fruition, they were all sworn to silence and languished in obscurity for more than two decades before that story was finally told.

For the Marine Corps, the nightmare scenario was a Navajo code talker falling into the hands of the enemy. However, for the code talkers themselves, an equally grim prospect was being mistaken for the enemy by their fellow Marines.

The Navajo code premiered at Guadalcanal in 1942, and soon proved its worth as it went from island to island, wherever there was combat. And with it went the code talkers themselves, who had to survive everything the Japanese could throw at them.

Chester Nez In 1942, 29 men were locked in a room and told to come up with a code the enemy couldn’t break. The result would be an unbeatable encryption that sounded to outside observers like a cross between gibberish and random noises. But now came the tricky part - teaching the code to hundreds of men who needed to commit it to memory.

It turns out that Navajo is an incredible rich and astoundingly complicated language, which made it perfect to become the secret weapon of the Allies in their fight against the Japanese in the Pacific.

As fighting men from across America marched off to fight in World War II, they were either joined or supported by two groups who made lasting impacts on ending the conflicts - women and Amerindians.

During World War II, more than a few Arizonans left their marks on the battles raging across Europe and in the Pacific. A Marine from the state would even be captured in one of the most iconic war photos of all time.

January has not been kind for the podcast schedule - and now it’s taken out my voice so I couldn’t release this week’s episode on time.

As World War II erupted halfway across the world, back in Arizona, thousands were asking the same question - what can I do? From rationing to finding people to pick cotton, it turns out they could do a lot.

Even as the camps for Japanese Americans were going up, plans were in the works to have them move permanently away from the West Coast. By early 1945, thousands had left for opportunities in education, the workforce, and even the armed services while the slow-moving legal system finally decided that there was no good reason to lock up loyal U.S. citizens.

Life in a concentration camp, even an American one, was never going to be pleasant. But the tens of thousands of imprisoned Japanese Americans found ways to get through the day, embracing the philosophy that the situation just couldn’t be helped.

Starting in March 1942, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast and sent to 10 camps where they would ride out the majority of the war. Two of those camps were located in Arizona, introducing tens of thousands of people to the rigors of living in the desert … without the option for leaving.

Even in the decades before the 1942 executive order to remove them all from the West Coast of America, life for Japanese Americans in Arizona wasn’t easy. And it only got worse when literal bombs started flying.

After their daring breakout on the evening of December 23, 1944, the 25 escaping German POWs tried various methods to get to freedom. They would be hampered by things like rain, cold, patrols, wary citizens, cactus and a dry river bed, ultimately resulting in all 25 being back in custody just over a month after breaking out.

Starting in 1943, 3,000 German prisoners of war, mostly naval men, would be held in a POW camp at Papago Park. In 1944, 28 of those deemed to be troublemakers discovered a blindspot in their compound and set upon an audacious plan to break out and make a run for Mexico.