Navajo Code Talkers in NYC to highlight secret WWII efforts
Museum planned to ensure their legacy survives
NEW YORK - The famed Navajo Code Talkers, the elite Marine unit whose unbreakable code stymied the Japanese in World War II, fear their legacy will die with them.
About 50 of the 400 Code Talkers are believed to be still alive, most living in the Navajo Nation reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Many are frail or ill, with little time left to tell the world about their wartime contribution.
But yesterday, 13 of the Code Talkers, some using canes, a few in wheelchairs, arrived in New York City to participate for the first time in the nation’s largest Veterans Day parade.
The young Navajo Marines, using secret Navajo language-encrypted military terms, helped the United States prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles, serving in every Marine assault in the South Pacific between 1942 and 1945. Military commanders said the code, transmitted verbally by radio, helped save countless American lives and bring a speedier end to the war in the Pacific theater.
They were sworn to secrecy about their code, so complex that even other Navajo Marines couldn’t decipher it. Used to transmit secret tactical messages via radio or telephone, the code remained unbroken and classified for decades because of its potential postwar use.
“We were never told that our code was never decoded’’ or given identities of the original 29 Navajos who created it, said Keith Little, 85, who joined the Marines at 17 and remembers crouching in a bomb crater amid heavy fire on Iwo Jima.
“It was all covered by secrecy. We were constantly told not to talk about it,’’ Little said. The Code Talkers felt compelled to honor their secrecy orders, even after the code was declassified in 1968.
The oldest of the 13 Code Talkers who came for today’s parade is 92, and the group includes one of the original 29.
“The code did a lot of damage to the enemy,’’ said Samuel Tom Holiday, 85, of Kayenta, Ariz., who also is joining the parade. He was 20 when he and two other Marines went behind enemy lines on Iwo Jima to locate a Japanese artillery unit advancing on American forces.
Once the unit was located, Holiday transmitted a coded message to Marine artillery, which fired a big shell at the Japanese. Holiday messaged “Right on Target’’ to a Navajo Code Talker in Marine artillery.
Today “there’s a certain elation about’’ knowing how much their work affected the outcome of the war, said Little, who runs a family ranch in Crystal, N.M., on the Navajo Nation.
Before the code, the Japanese intercepted and sabotaged US military communications at an alarming rate because they had expert English translators.
The Navajo code, based on the ancient language, changed that. In the first 48 hours of the battle of Iwo Jima, six Code Talkers worked nonstop, transmitting and receiving more than 800 messages about troop movement and enemy fire - none deciphered by the Japanese.
Recognition from the US government has been slow to come. It wasn’t until 2000 that the Congressional Gold Medal was bestowed on the survivors of the original 29 Code Talkers and silver medals on the rest.
The 2002 film “Windtalkers,’’ starring Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater, helped shed light on the group.
At least five of the Code Talkers died this year, creating an urgency for the Navajo Code Talkers Foundation to create a museum in their honor in New Mexico, near the Navajo capital of Window Rock, Ariz. It is slated to open sometime in 2012.
The Code Talkers in New York this week hope to highlight their efforts and financial needs for the museum. Yesterday, they attended a ceremony aboard the USS Intrepid, a World War II warship, to commemorate the 234th anniversary of the Marine Corps.
