Why did the Navajos choose owl for a spy plane in their language?

Answer 1

The Navajo word for owl is: Néʼéshjaaʼ. They used bird words in the substitution code for airplanes. Bird in Navajo is Tsídii In his book about being a Code Talker and the war, Chester Nez, one of the first group pf Code Talkers, writes about how they invented the code. In general, they made up most of the code on a on a base in San Diego. First, they started with alphabet substitution as the base of the code. They wanted a code that code be used easily, quickly and was never written down so it could not be captured. They assigned about three options of Navajo words to each letter so they could mix it up. Example might be: B- b stands for bear, bear in Navajo is Shash. C- c stands for cow, cow in Navajo is beegashi, G- g stands for goat, goat is Navajo is tł'ízí . [note this is the standardized spelling used today with tone marks, it those days there was not a standard spelling system]. Then, they chose two more options for each letter. Later, to speed it up, they added code words for common military nouns. Just so they could remember and learn it easily they assigned fish words for ships and bird words for airplanes, etc.
My teacher who had been a code talker said if they got stuck they would talk a break, go outside, have a smoke and come up with a good one. The point was that even to a Navajo speaker it would sound like a long list of meaningless Navajo words with little pattern. But it had to be easy to remember so they didn't need a code book and it could be done very accurately and rapidly. A radio operator using standard code books at the time took about ten times longer about 30 minute vs 3 minutes for a short passage, and the codes were often broken. Nez does not speak about the word owl in particular but it would have been because it was a bird and perhaps the silent owl association. Or their listening ability. It is also possible that because the Navajo word for ears is -jaa, they and the name for owl seems like a reference to the ear tufts some owls have that that was the association. They did not usually use cultural meanings in particular. Owls can sometimes be seen as helpers of Navajo witches or skin walkers in disguise but that is not why they used it for the spy plane is my guess. It was just easy to remember.
Remember, the main point was it be fast and easy to remember and not need to be written down and hard to break. Another aspect was that, for the Japanese, it was very hard to even transcribe and impossible to reproduce and fake because Japanese has very few of the standard Navajo consonants and Navajo is tonal and Japaneses is not. This made it hard to even hear the sounds let alone write them or copy them. They did suspect it was Navajo based and they did capture a Navajo soldier who was not a Code Talker. He told them it was a string of nonsense, which it was. They then tortured him so they got no more information after that.