25/10/99

A minyan of Navajo

    What do Mexican Indians, the Hagana, Hiroshima and this newspaper have in common?
    The answer: Prof. Ilan Shiloh of Jerusalem.
    It's a bizarre story, never before told, and there's a lesson to be learned from it for aspiring interviewers: wait for the afterthought.
    Some of the best anecdotes in this column derive from the words "Oh, and by the way...." All I have to do is turn off my tape recorder, or wind down a conversation, and the best stuff comes out.
    Shiloh, commander of the Jewish War Veterans, called and asked if I might be interested in writing about a program his organization initiated to fund demobbed soldiers earning high-school diplomas.
    I declined. He continued chatting, recalling his offbeat experience as a Post journalist. I said, "Oh?" (the most potent word in an interviewer's bag of tricks). He continued talking, about this and that, until finally:
    "By the way...."
    Bingo!
    "I was involved," began his afterthought, "in a plan to bring Navajo Indians here."
    "Oh?"
    "It was in late '46, early '47. The British were tapping into Hagana and Palmah conversations, and the idea was to recruit the Navajo, who would conduct communications for the Jews in their own language."
    A few days later, we were sipping tea at the Gil cafe in Rehavia. Shiloh's quirk-of-history tale tumbled out.

IN THE Navy's Marine Corps during World War II, Ohio-born Shiloh was shipped off to Guam -- stopping first at Pearl Harbor to refuel -- where they underwent training for the invasion at Iwo Jima.
    "In Guam, I got to know some Navajo Indians, because I was in a reconnaissance platoon, and we were always radioing back from the line what was going on.
    "The Navajo were recruited, grudgingly, for the war effort. How did that come about? One of the theories is, the Marines were looking for someone to translate because the Japs were tapping in all the time. They didn't know what language to get, until someone said, hey, what about the Navajo! History is full of these striking dogmatic statements."
    The Apache were considered, but "they would have nothing to do with us. They never forgave America." The Navajo -- who live in New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Colorado -- had an advantage because at the time, their language was strictly oral: nothing was written, so the Japanese could not possibly get ahold of it. "Their language is very interesting: it's related to the languages of the Pacific Islands and China. Yes, China! It's that same linguistic family, called the Dene.
    "We were getting closer to the invasion of Japan, and we had 300 or 400 Navajo in training with us. They played a critical role.
    "Even though they could talk freely, they used code words. For example, they never said dive-bomber, they said 'hawk.' A grenade was a 'potato.' So even if by chance someone [for the Japanese] understood Navajo, they wouldn't understand the code words.
    "Tremendous casualties were anticipated for the invasion of Japan. The Navajo were very important to us, because anyone who survived, we would have to make contact.
    "We were actually beginning to load ship for the invasion, and we heard a bomb had been dropped. And we said, 'Oh. Yeah. A bomb.' And they said, 'a BIG bomb.' And they said, 'Another big bomb has been dropped and Japan has surrendered.' The Marines didn't believe it. One entire division stayed on full guard duty, sleeping under the airplanes. The Japs had been fighting so ferociously, no one believed they would just put down their weapons.
    "While the rest of the world was celebrating the end of the war, we were on full alert. That's when I got to know the Navajo better, because we lay around all day, waiting."
    When Shiloh returned Stateside -- first he was sent to China, because the Communists were moving through Manchuria -- he resumed his studies among the Indians in New Mexico.
    "One day, I was walking along a street in Albuquerque, and someone came up to me and asked, in very broken English, if I was a Jew, working among the Navajo, used to be a Marine. I said yes, yes. They said, 'We want to have a few come over to Palestine.' I said why? They said, 'The British are monitoring all our telephone and radio conversations, and we need privacy. Can you get some Navajo to come over?'
    "I said, well, I'll talk to them and find out. They were offering free food and housing, and $100. It was a lot of money back then. The Navajo were sheep herders and silversmiths, and very poor.
    "So I lined up a few. We began with a minyan of Navajo, with the option of taking more.   
    "Back then, the State Department was not the least bit sympathetic to the Jews. I mean, Jewish refugees were nothing compared to Arab oil. Remember, George Marshall, the secretary of state, said to Truman, 'If you recognize the State of Israel, I'll never vote for you again.' 
    "So we waited [to get passports for the Navajo], and we're now moving into the summer and fall of '47, and the war was really getting hot over here. Still, no passports. As you know, Indians coming to America from Mexico illegally are called wetbacks; so I said look, we'll do the reverse! We'll bring the Indians into Mexico, and we'll take a plane from there.
    "We had Mexicans who knew how to arrange these things. Everything was lined up. Anyway, it got into 1948, and with all the dithering and dallying, why, the Jews won the war. So they decided they didn't need the Navajo anymore. So I said to them, well, it was a good idea, here's a little money for your troubles and ... toda raba!"
    In fact, the Hagana was not necessarily convinced that it would work. "You'd have to have a Hebrew speaker talk to an English speaker who would talk to a Navajo to send a message, and then the same thing on the other side."
    At the time, Shiloh knew more Navajo than Hebrew.
    "Not only were they dumb about the Middle East and Palestine, but I was dumb. I wasn't a Zionist, I had no idea. I wish I could tell you that we had some earth-shaking Zionist conversations; never. I didn't know a word of Hebrew. I wasn't religious. They [the Jews] said to me 'a kibbutz in the Galilee' -- I didn't know where the Galilee was! So what was I going to tell the Navajo?!"
    So the Navajo never did come here, but just as unlikely, Shiloh did.
    "I came here in 1950. I didn't know an alef from a bet. I started out in a rented room in the Greek Colony, where the religious people used to keep the carp in their bathtubs.
    "I needed to make a little extra money, so I went to The Jerusalem Post and I met with Gershon Agronsky. He said, 'Well, what can you do for me?' I said I'll write stories! He said, 'What are you?' An anthropologist, I told him. He said, 'OK, Ben-Gurion is dedicating a new archeological museum at Sha'ar Hagolan, go there and interview him. Sha'ar Hagolan was Early Neolithic (some would say, so was Ben-Gurion).
    "He was a nice fellow, but he wouldn't talk to me. He said 'Ivrit. Speak Ivrit.' I didn't know what to do.
    "Then I realized, the bus driver who took me up there: he was my man! So I had him interview Ben-Gurion, and I got the story."
    His journalism career didn't amount to much (he went on to become a professor of anthropology) and you can see why: Shiloh was sitting on a wonderful scoop -- the Hagana recruitment of the Navajo -- and even after 50 years it was a mere afterthought.