Human Code Machines

Part A: How does the author support the idea that the Navajo men who volunteered to fight in World War II had been living isolated lives?

• by stating that their messages were impossible to understand

• by stating that most had never been off their reservation

• by stating they communicated orally and not in writing

• by stating that they named planes and boats after animals

Which paragraph in the text best supports the answer to Part A?

• paragraph 3

• paragraph 5

• paragraph 6

• paragraph 9

Read the paragraph from the text:

The Navajo code was proposed by a non-Navajo , Philip Johnston, the son of missionaries on the reservation. Marine officers were skeptical at first. American armies had used other Indian languages to send messages during World War I. Yet because the ancient dialects had no words for machine gun or tank, the experiment failed. Johnston had a better idea--a language combined with a code.

The author uses a word that means "doubtful" in the text. Which word from the paragraph is a synonym for "doubtful"?

Part A: How does the author support the idea that the Navajo soldiers were able to make a code related to war even though their language lacked words for it?

• by showing how they mixed language and culture in the code

• by showing that they started by encoding 400 words

• by showing how they proved the Navy couldn't break the code

• by showing that htey met several times to encode new terms

Part B: Which two details from the article support the answer in Part A?

• "...the business of their daily lives was conducted in their own language."

• "...Navajo was the language least likely to be known to foreigners."

• "..the Navajo soldiers rooted it, like their lives, in nature"

• "Lotso, meaning 'whale,' was the code word for "battleship"

• "Marines spell out abbreviations with their own alphabet..."

Which of the following best supports the idea that the Navajo code was hard to crack?

• "...the first letter of each word spelled out Mt. Suribachi."

• "The Navajo Code Talkers were unique in cryptographic history."

• "Even today, their code remains one of the few in history that was never broken."

• "The Navajo language contained no words for the horrors of war."