Last of the Meskwaki Tribe Code Talkers has passed on . . .

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Last of the Meskwaki Tribe Code Talkers has passed on . . .

August 25, 2004

Several months ago, the Meskwaki Code Talkers Recognition Act, was introduced in the U.S. Congress that would finally bring official recognition to the Meskwaki Code Talkers.

The Act, not yet passed, would authorize gold medals in recognition of their contributions to the Nation during World War II.

Frank Sanache was the last living Meskwaki Code Talker, and he has died at the age of 86, before Congress agreed to honour him and the others.

The Act proposed April 30th included, " (1) During World War II, 8 members of the Meskwaki tribe of Tama County, Iowa, used their native language as code to transmit vital information to the United States Armed Forces regarding enemy actions, locations, troops, and ammunition.

(2) These Meskwaki tribe members, known as the Meskwaki Code Talkers, worked under challenging conditions in North Africa, taking extreme risks to provide critical information to the United States Armed Forces.

(3) Frank Sanache, the only surviving Meskwaki Code Talker, endured severe hardships both while he was stationed in North Africa and while he was held prisoner in a Polish internment camp after being captured by the Germans.

(4) The enemy was never able to translate the native Meskwaki language, and the Meskwaki Code Talkers, among other Code Talkers, are credited with saving the lives of countless members of the United States Armed Forces and contributing significantly to the victory of the United States and its allies. "

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.4254:

The Meskwaki Code Talkers included
Edward Benson - Dewey Roberts - Frank Sanache - Willard Sanache - Melvin Twin - Judy Wayne Wabaunasee - Mike Wayne Wabaunasee, and Dewey Youngbear.

The Meskwaki, based in Tama County, Iowa were among 18 tribes that contributed code talkers during the war. But their achievements went largely unnoticed because the code was classified until 1968.

However, in 2001 President Bush presented 29 of the original Navajo code talkers with the Congressional Gold Medal. The Meskwakis never received that recognition.

This spring, the Iowa Legislature passed a resolution urging Congress to recognize the Meskwaki code talkers for their heroism.


BACKGROUND

Meskwaki Code Talkers

In January 1941, eleven months before Pearl Harbor, 27 Meskwaki men enlisted together in the 34th Division of the 168th Infantry of the United States Army. Twenty-two-year-old Frank Sanache was one of them. As the eldest of the group, per tribal tradition the other men looked to him for leadership. At the time, the men made up sixteen percent of Tama, Iowa’s Meskwaki population—an unusual community of Native Americans in that they lived not on a reservation, but on a “settlement” of self-owned land. Of the 27 Meskwaki enlistees, Sanache, his brother Willard and six others were sent to Scotland and England for code-talking training after general training in Marshalltown, Iowa and jungle-warfare training in Louisiana. Meskwaki Native Americans, along with eighteen other tribes around the United States, were trained in talking in codes that were based on their native language—codes that were never broken by the Germans.

Sanache and the other seven code talkers served as scouts in Northern Africa, using walkie-talkies to radio the coordinates of artillery batteries. “Frank used to tell me about how he would be sent out as a scout,” Alex Walker, a Meskwaki tribal council chair, later reported. “They used to send him about two miles ahead of the troops in dangerous conditions. There were only eight of them so they worked 24-hour shifts.” Sanache called such work “the worst place this side of hell.”

In mid-February 1943 Sanache was performing his duties at Faid Pass in Tunisia when German soldiers captured him, then flew him with about two thousand other Midwest POWs to Naples, Italy, where they were shipped by train to Nazi Germany. For 29 months, Sanache unloaded bags of lime, and other materials, from rail cars in a POW camp in Hammerstein—dusty work that would leave him with scarred lungs and a variety of chronic illnesses for the rest of his life. He survived on a daily ration of a cup of soup, two boiled potatoes, a glass of water and a slice of bread. He was finally liberated at the end of the war when Allied Troops liberated the POW camp where he had been imprisoned.