26 August 2004

Frank Sanache (Meskwaki) 1918 - 2004






Code Talker, Last One from His tribe, Dies
Frank Sanache was 86

by Sam Lewin 8/24/2004

The achievements of Frank Sanache, the last living Code Talker from the Meskwaki Indian tribe, are being remembered following his death this past weekend.

Sanache passed away Saturday at the age of 86. He was all that remained of the original eight members of the tribe who served as scouts and Code Talkers for eight companies of their division in North Africa during World War 2. The Meskawaki Tribe is based in Tama, Iowa. They were one of 18 tribes that sent Code Talkers out during the war. Twenty-seven Meskwakis in total enlisted in the Iowa National Guard in 1941 and were activated in the Army's 34th Division. Sanache was the eldest at the age of twenty-two, and later news accounts indicate he took a leadership role.

Karen Morris works for the tribe’s Senior Center. She said she knew Sanache her “whole life.”

“ He was a pretty quite guy, didn’t say much,” Morris told the Native American Times.

She said he never discussed his wartime service.

Sanache never really got the chance to use his language skills after being shipped to North Africa because of the limited numbers of the Meskwakis and the short range of walkie-talkies. Sanache was captured just five months after he arrived in North Africa and spent 28 months as a prisoner of war in a Polish camp after being captured by the Germans. Sanache once called the duty in the African desert, "the worst place this side of hell.”

President Bush presented twenty-nine original Navajo code talkers with the Congressional Gold Medal in 2001. The Meskwakis never received that recognition, although Senators Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, both pushed for it along with other lawmakers.

"Unfortunately, the Meskwaki code talkers were left out of the recognition received by the Navajos," said Sen. John Putney, a Republican who co-sponsored a resolution in the Iowa legislature that honored Sanache. "They did the same job and sacrificed greatly, and so I believe it is time that we honor our own Native Americans and request that the Congress do so too.

Harkin awarded Sanache medals in 2002.

Sanache’s brother, Willard, also served as a Code Talker. The others from the Meskwaki were Dewey Youngbear, Edward Benson, Judie Wayne Wabaunasee, Mike Wayne Wabaunasee, Dewey Roberts, and Melvin Twin.

Sanache worked at a paper mill upon returning to Iowa. Morris said that he is survived by four daughters.
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