On Sunday, Aug. 14, the Navajo Code Talkers Association and Department of Navajo Veterans Affairs will celebrate the holiday and honor the brave young Navajo men who answered the call to duty and helped devise an unbreakable military code.
The code, based on the Navajo language, helped the U.S. win battle after battle as it fought to retake the eastern Pacific from the Japanese. The code talkers returned home sworn to secrecy until 1968, when the government declassified the code 23 years after the war ended.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Hats off to these Navajo warriors
Today is Code Talkers Day.
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In case you're interested, there's even a very good movie about them.
ReplyDeleteThey may not have declassified the code until the 60s, but I heard about the Navajo Code Talkers when I was a kid (we spent a year outside Kirtland, New Mexico, just across the San Juan River from part of the Checkerboard Reservation.)
My father was a Marine Raider and he was very proud of the Code Talkers. He always said that beside the job they were pretty uniformly really good guys.
ReplyDeleteHe said they made a real difference and many Marines were alive because of them.
JXM: Your pa was a Marine Raider? Ultra cool!
ReplyDeleteRebecca, spent some time in Farmington as a young adult...but I heard of the Code Talkers early in life - Dad told stories.
ReplyDelete