At long last, silver for secret mission

AKWESASNE — As a code talker during World War II, Louis Levi Oakes used the Mohawk language to transmit secret messages.

Now, the 91-year-old Akwesasne man has been honored with a Congressional Silver Medal, public recognition of work that, for decades, was unknown even to his own family.

Congressional Silver Medals were also awarded Saturday at Generations Park in Akwesasne to a number of Mohawk code talkers who are deceased, accepted by surviving family members.

Present at the ceremony, attended by about 900 people, were St. Regis Mohawk Tribal Chief Ron LaFrance; Michael Cook, commander of the Akwesasne American Legion Post 1479, the home post of the Mohawk code talkers; Congresswoman Elise Stefanik; and Assemblywoman Addie Russell.

On one side, the Congressional Silver Medals for the Mohawk code talkers display an image of a code talker in uniform, speaking on a telephone, with a wolf, a bear and a turtle, symbols of Iroquois Confederacy tribes, in the background. 

On the opposite side is a Mohawk warrior in traditional headdress. 

JOINED INTELLIGENCE UNIT

In a conversation with his grandson, Leroy Swamp, and with the Press-Republican, Oakes looked back on his work as a code talker.

He grew up in Akwesasne and served in the U.S. Army during the World War II, traveling far from home for the first time in his life.

It was at Fort Polk, La., that he received his assignment to work with codes. “That was where I got started,” Oakes said.

As part of an intelligence unit, he learned about cryptography.

“I had to go to school for a little bit,” he said, recalling that he learned various codes.

However, the “code” that was most important to his work was one that came naturally to him: his own Mohawk language.

During the war, Native American languages were used to send messages that were never deciphered by the enemy.

Although the work of Navajo code talkers has become highly publicized in recent years, other Native American languages were also used as codes, including Mohawk.

SECRET MESSAGES

Oakes was sent to the Philippines, in the “Asiatic Pacific,” as he put it. There, he met a couple of other Mohawk code talkers.

As the only Mohawk speakers in that region — perhaps in that hemisphere — they could send messages that the enemy cryptographers could not decipher.

Japanese code-breakers who were adept at solving mathematically based codes were stymied by the use of Native American languages. Although an artificially designed cipher could be cracked, the living languages of North American native peoples defied such analysis.

TROOP MOVEMENTS

“We would be given a piece of paper, and we would read it over,” Oakes said. Such messages were often transmitted by military telephone or radio.

Oakes would always speak in Mohawk in transmitting the secret information, which usually involved locations and troop movements.

Thus, he and his comrades in the intelligence unit were able to maintain lines of communication in the Army while preventing sensitive tactical information from falling into enemy hands.

Oakes, a technician corporal, served during the critical final years of the war, from 1943 until its end in 1945.

UNEXPECTED REUNION

One event that made an impression on Oakes was a reunion with his cousin, Joe Rourke, who was also serving in the Army.

Rourke had been in Europe, but he was transferred to the Philippines, where Oakes unexpectedly encountered him.

“It was a surprise,” Oakes recalled.

On the far side of the world, he was suddenly connected with family once again.

MEDALS AND MEMORIES

For decades after the war, Oakes remained silent about his work as a code talker. Even his own family did not know about his contributions.

“It was confidential information, so I never talked about it,” Oakes said.

Leroy Swamp recalled that when he was growing up, he never knew about his grandfather’s real work during the war. Only in recent years, as the role of Native American code talkers during World War II has become more widely known, did he learn about this chapter in his family history.

Now, the work that Oakes kept secret for so long has been publicly honored with the Congressional Silver Medal.

Of his long-ago days in the Philippines, sending secret messages in his own language while a global war was drawing to a close, Oakes said: “Sometimes I think about it. It’s like a dream.”