Navajo Code Talkers Seek WWII Legacy

Online, November 11, 2010 (Newswire.com) - WINDOW ROCK, Ariz., (UPI) -- American Indian veterans say they want people to know the Navajo code they used to send secret tactical messages to the U.S. Marines helped end World War II.

"The young people need to know what happened," code talker Frank Chee Willetto, 85, tells USA Today.

Willetto, one of about 70 of the 400 code talkers trained by the Marines believed still alive, and other code talkers will soon launch a $42 million fundraising campaign for a museum and veterans center on the Navajo Nation reservation in northeastern Arizona.

"We are all old, and we want to see the result of our efforts," retired logger Keith Little, 86, tells the newspaper.

The code talkers were recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps after the son of a protestant missionary who grew up on the reservation and spoke the language convinced Marine brass the language could be used for an undecipherable code to let platoons communicate quickly and securely.

The recruited code talkers devised a complex system, using Navajo words for each letter of the English alphabet and for names of military weapons, equipment and other phrases, USA Today said.

At Iwo Jima, Maj. Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of battle. They sent and received over 800 messages, all without error, he later reported.

"Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima," the Naval History and Heritage Command, the official history program of the U.S. Navy, quoted Connor as saying later.

The battle was immortalized by a photograph of five Marines and one sailor raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi.

The Navajo code talkers' work remained classified until 1968.