Navajo Nation honors Code Talkers

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (KRQE) - Navajo warriors whose spoken code proved crucial to World War Two victories paraded through their capital Friday in an annual ceremony honoring the tribe's bravest and most-respected elders.

More than 60 years ago the Code Talkers were in the South Pacific playing key roles in winning major battles like Iwo Jima.

The leader of that invasion later said the island of Iwo Jima would have never been taken without Navajo Code Talkers flawlessly transmitting hundreds of messages around the clock. The Japanese never broke the code which involved substituting Navajo words for military terms.

On Friday hundreds gathered in the tribal capital of Window Rock as the community reverberated with the sounds of native songs honoring the Code Talkers.

Val Singer of Kayenta, Ariz., credited the Code Talkers with preserving "our freedom, to continue to practice our religion, and speech."

For those who did not survive the war or have died in the years since there was a wreath and a salute along with an important message for younger generations...

"If they don't learn about the contributions of those who've passed, it's gone," Morris Bitsie of Albuquerque said.

Code Talkers are kind of the rock stars of the Navajo nation sought out for autographs and photos. During the war in the South Pacific it was a tough job to scramble around battlefields reciting and translating complex military intelligence with Navajo code...

"It was, yeah," Code Talker Thomas Begaye said. "We had to do by memory. We didn't have any book or anything to assist us in our hip pocket."

Code Talkers would serve again in Korea and in the early years of the Viet Nam War. Their service remained secret until the late 1960s.

In 1982 President Reagan designated Aug. 14 National Navajo Code Talkers Day.