Last Of World War II Comanche Code Talkers Dies In Tulsa

[rainbow4321]

http://www.kotv.com/main/home/stories.asp?whichpage=1&id=87138

Charles Chibitty, the last surviving Comanche code talker from World War II, has died in Tulsa at age 83.

Cathy Flynn with the Comanche Nation headquarters in Lawton says Chibitty died Wednesday at a Tulsa nursing home. Chibitty was one of 20 Comanche Indians who used their native language as a code to send messages that the Germans couldn't decipher.

A group of Navajos did the same in the Pacific theater and the Choctaws served as code talkers during World War I.

Chibitty rose to corporal and was awarded the World War Two Victory Medal, the European Theater of Operations Victory Medal, the Europe African Middle East Campaign Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.


http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBIT_CHIBITTY?SITE=KING&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=US.html&CTIME=2005-07-21-13-32-07

The group of Comanche Indians from the Lawton area were selected for special duty in the U.S. Army to provide the Allies with a language that the Germans could not decipher. Like the larger group of Navajo Indians who performed a similar service in the Pacific theater, the Comanches were dubbed "code talkers."

"It's strange, but growing up as a child I was forbidden to speak my native language at school," Chibitty said in 2002. "Later my country asked me to. My language helped win the war and that makes me very proud. Very proud."

In a 1998 story for The Oklahoman, Chibitty recalled being at Normandy on D-Day, and said someone once asked him what he was afraid of most and if he feared dying. "No. That was something we had already accepted," he said.

<snip>

"We could never do it again," Chibitty told Oklahoma Today. "It's all electronic and video in war now."

[kikiek]

1. Now there goes a true American hero. Prayers to him for his journey.

[roguevalley]

2. God speed to you, sir. Thank you for your service.

[Maccagirl]

3. You wouldn't believe what Yahoo posters

were saying about this man-it was the most racist, sickening stuff I have ever read. Sometimes I'm really ashamed to be called "American."

[TheFarseer]

4. wow

What could you possibly say bad about a Native American code talker? There are some sick people out there. They're probably the same people who support nuking the insurgents.

[Maccagirl]

5. It was horrible

Some were calling him "Shitbitty" and saying he was probably a drunken, low-life casino worker. One poster (with people replying in agreement) that Indians should thank whites for "saving" them. If I hadn't been at work I would have vomited.

[Lexingtonian]

6. anti-Indian racism and bigotry

is really awful everywhere I've been in the rural West. Unfortunately, it seems to be spreading eastward. It's all about Original Sin to white settlement that Must Be Denied. You can't be a proper lowlife these days without it.

[RoyGBiv]

7. Spreading?

It's already there and has been for, oh, several hundred years. The "spreading" has followed the path of European and American conquest.

One of my least favorite stories to tell is one involving meeting a woman at a historical convention in Tulsa from Baltimore. Note this was a "historical convention." The people there were supposedly knowledgeable of history.

Well, upon her learning I was born in Oklahoma, the first question out of her mouth was where she might be able to go to see Native Americans in their natural habitat. She wanted to see a village made of teepees, was especially interested in "watching a game of counting crow," and the fashion. OH! She just had to get her hands on some deer-hide clothing amd turquoise jewelry.

Anyone who knows anything about Native American history is well aware that the majority of Native Americans in what is now Oklahoma lived in solid structures. Some of the wealthier classes actually lived in mansions that were identified as plantation houses. One of the largest plantations and slave populations west of the Mississippi was in what is now Love County in southern Oklahoma. And for pity's sake it was 2001 at the time. Natives lost their right to communal property a hundred years ago.