[Deathwatch] Samuel Billison, Navajo code talker, TBD

[Deathwatch Central]

Another from a reader - Ed.

OBITUARY: Samuel Billison, Navajo Code Talker

The longtime president of the Code Talker Association was an advocate
for veterans and young people.

The Associated Press

WINDOW ROCK - Navajo Code Talker Samuel Billison, who served on the
Navajo Nation Council and was the longtime president of the Code Talker
Association, has died.

The Navajo Nation said he died yesterday of heart complications. His
age was not immediately known.

Billison joined a group of Navajo Marines - the Code Talkers - who
invented a military code based on the Navajo language to confound the
Japanese during World War II. They used the code and their native
language to communicate troop movements and orders.

The Marines developed a secret vocabulary that renamed military
armaments and equipment using rough equivalents in Navajo.

Airplanes became birds, ships became fish and weapons were named after
various items. For example, the word "bomb" was replaced by the Navajo
word for "egg." Amphibious units were designated "chal," or frogs.

Billison, in an interview with the Associated Press in 2001, said he
joined the U.S. Marines right out of high school in 1943. He said he
was sent to test as a code talker when he completed boot camp and the
Marines realized he was fluent in Navajo and English.

"This code was very difficult to learn and a lot of the young Navajos
didn't pass the tests that they had," he said. "It was a code that was
within the language. So a regular Navajo that didn't study that code
had no idea what we were talking about even though it was their
language."

Billison and his fellow code talkers were not allowed to discuss their
work when they returned home after the war.

"When we were being discharged the Marines told us, 'If anybody asks
you what you did with the Marines, just say you fought. Don't say
anything about radio, about code or communication,"' Billison said.

The Defense Department first released information on the code talkers
in 1968.

Billison traveled throughout the world to carry the story of the Code
Talkers who "offered their language to allow the citizens of the United
States the freedom that we are able to enjoy today," said Lawrence
Morgan, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council.

Billison, who earned a doctorate from the University of New Mexico in
Albuquerque, served on the Navajo Nation Council and the Navajo Area
School Board Association, helped reorganize the education system under
the Bureau of Indian Affairs, was a member of the former Kinlichee
school board and had been Kinlichee chapter president, Morgan said.

He never stopped advocating both for veterans and young people and
recently helped in the tribe's Get Out the Vote campaign.

"In particular, the Code Talkers targeted the youth," Morgan said. "The
message they shared was that they fought for our rights as citizens,
including the right to vote."




Leaders hail Billison as 'hero to the Navajos'

By Bill Donovan
Special to the Times

WINDOW ROCK - Navajo tribal leaders said Wednesday they were saddened
to hear of the death of Dr. Sam Billison, one of the Navajo Nation's
most respected leaders.

A former Navajo Code Talker, council delegate, Kinlichee Chapter
president and educator, Billison went through life with a smile on his
face and a life-long appreciation for the joy of living.

President Joe Shirley Jr. said on Wednesday that the news of the
untimely death of Billison, who is his maternal grandfather, saddened
him.

"Dr. Billison was a hero to the Navajos as well as to the world because
he was a Navajo Code Talker," he said.

Shirley said Billison also was a very honorable leader of his community
and of his nation. "Certainly he will be sorely missed."

He said, "As we pay our last respects, I ask all Navajos to pay homage
to all his accomplishments for the people and to pay homage to his
family who were his roots and his strength as he had gone out into the
world to serve."

"Dr. Billison led an extraordinary life," said Speaker of the Council
Lawrence Morgan.
	
Morgan pointed out that Billison, who was about 80, spent most of his
life serving the Navajo people in one capacity or another.

As a student at the University of New Mexico, he wanted to become a
teacher, feeling that was the way to improve conditions on the Navajo
Reservation where few managed to make it beyond high school.

He finally managed to receive a doctorate from UNM and began working
with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reorganize its education system.
Over the years, he also played a major part in seeing that BIA schools
maintained certain standards, serving at times on the Kinlichee School
Board and the Navajo Area School Board Association.

By the 1960s, however, his friends were encouraging him to go into
tribal politics. He challenged Raymond Nakai for the chairmanship,
running on a platform of reform and bringing jobs to the reservation.

But Billison couldn't match Nakai's popularity among Navajos who had
listened to him on the radio for years. After the election, Billison
went back to working in education.

Over the years, he mused on what would have happened if he had won the
election.

"I think things would have been a lot different," he said in the 1980s.


For one thing, Billison said, he would have devoted more funds to
scholarships for youth and encouraged them to do whatever they needed
to do to get a good education.

He also said he didn't think he would have made the mistake Nakai did
by encouraging a young electrical engineer by the name of Peter
MacDonald to return to the reservation to run the Office of Navajo
Economic Opportunity.

Billison later ran against MacDonald in the primary, but failed to make
a big enough showing to get into the general election. In the late 90s,
he would get his chance to make a difference when he ran and won the
council seat for Kinlichee, serving for four years.

By the time Billison was in his 60s, he also became more active in the
Navajo Code Talker Association, and was serving as its president when
he died this week of complications from recent heart problems. Billison
was a code talker during World War II.

Morgan said Billison's term as association president was one of service
to the Navajo people. The two worked together to get out the Navajo
vote in the recent election.

"In particular, the code talkers targeted the youth," Morgan said. "The
message they shared was that they fought for our rights as citizens,
including the right to vote. His efforts, in conjunction with his
fellow code talkers, helped a record number of Navajo people get to the
polls on Nov. 2."

Morgan said he and Billison most recently were hard at work on the Code
Talkers Memorial being planned for Veterans Park in Window Rock. "We
had been planning on more activities with Dr. Billison when we heard of
his passing," Morgan said. "Dr. Billison's active engagement in civic
life was always welcome by myself and my staff."

In the last decade of his life, Billison became involved in a couple of
projects that gave him a lot of pleasure - working to get a movie done
on exploits of the Navajo Code Talkers and the creation of a Navajo GI
Joe action figure.

It was Billison who worked with documentary filmmakers and also with
producers of "Windtalkers," the movie starring Nicholas Cage.

He wrote in a letter to Cage, who played the bodyguard of a code
talker, asking him to "reconsider, for the dignity of the Navajo ...
Native American language is very powerful and very sacred."

As for the action figure, the toymakers used Billison's voice for the
lines spoken by the Navajo GI Joe, giving him a form of immortality.

Cassandra Morgan, no relation to Lawrence Morgan, a national service
officer for the Military Order of the Purple Heart, also issued her
condolences to the family.

"As a goodwill ambassador, educator and advocate for freedom of speech
and traditional values, Dr. Billison was extraordinary and an excellent
example of Diné morals and teachings," she said.

"America's combat-wounded pay great honor and homage to Dr. Billison,
his inspiration and sacrifices to ensure freedom and courage to speak
our Diné language as an intricate role in the defense of a people, a
nation and most importantly, freedom.

"He will be greatly missed," she said. "Semper Fi, Dr. Billison."