National Navajo Code Talkers Day Honors Unbreakable Legacy

Each year on August 14, the nation pauses to recognize a unique chapter in American history—National Navajo Code Talkers Day. The observance honors the Navajo Nation members and other Native Americans who served as radio code talkers in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II, using their native language to create a code that the enemy never cracked.

The origins of this extraordinary wartime tool date back to World War I, when the U.S. military first employed Native American languages, such as Choctaw, to send secure messages. But it was in World War II that the concept reached its greatest success, thanks in large part to the Navajo language’s complexity and rarity among non-Navajo speakers.

Philip Johnston, a non-Navajo who

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