Their exact numbers are unknown – and dwindling fast – but some 60 years after serving their homeland, the Navajo Code Talkers have become superstars, but earned no riches for their deeds.
“A lot of people take pictures. We could hardly eat our dinner. Our dinner got cold,” says 85-year-old Code Talker Jimmy Begay, who recently traveled from his home near Sawmill, Ariz., to appear along with the president in Veterans Day commemorations in Washington, D.C.
“We say we’re too old. We can’t move around like we used to. I told them we’d just get in the way,” Begay says, laughing. “But I had a good time.”
Begay was one of more than 400 young Navajo men – whose federal government had tried to wipe out their language – who later used that native tongue to thwart U.S. enemies in World War II.
The Navajo language, with its high and low tones, glottal stops and myriad complexities, was the basis of an indecipherable code, devised by the original 29 Navajo Marine Code Talkers. And, unlike all other codes used then, theirs could be transmitted quickly and accurately. It was never broken.
“We were walking code,” says Keith Little, an 82-year-old from Navajo, N.M., and president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association. “When your own government tries to exterminate you – and would not accept you as an ordinary citizen before – I think that the Navajo Code Talkers broke down a lot of discriminatory barriers.”
When the U.S. flag was raised on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima in 1945, it was an iconic moment of victory in the Pacific. Military commanders and analysts credited the Code Talkers for turning that battle by flawlessly sending more than 800 messages in the first 48 hours. The Code Talkers were indispensable throughout the Pacific.
Thirteen died in the war. But the Code Talkers’ contribution was kept a government secret until declassified in 1968.
In 2001, President Bush presented Congressional Gold Medals to the original 29 Code Talkers. Five were still alive to receive them. By 2002, the year Hasbro released a Navajo G.I. Joe doll and Nicholas Cage made the movie “Windtalkers,” the surviving men were receiving VIP treatment.
Historian and documentary producer George A. Colburn of Santa Fe says it’s an amazing experience to travel with any of the men.
“They are absolutely swarmed upon,” Colburn says. “We call them our rock stars.”
Up to 30 of the surviving Code Talkers attend monthly association meetings in Gallup, N.M., Little says.
But neither the association, historians nor even the Navajo government has tracked all the men who served as Code Talkers, knows their whereabouts, or even knows for certain who is still alive.
Begay says he and some comrades estimate there are 75 or 80 of the 420 Code Talkers still living. Others believe the figure remains more than 100.
“That’s a question I can’t answer,” Little says. “Maybe a third of them are still alive. But that’s just a guess.”
The Code Talkers who can be found are octogenarian celebrities, still in demand and traveling across the country at ages when it is difficult for them to even hear the accolades being heaped on them.
“People treat him like a king. One woman fainted on him,” says Virginia June, wife of 85-year-old Sgt. Allen Dale “Pops” June of Longmont, one of the original 29 Code Talkers, of which four are believed to still be alive.
The Junes just returned from West Jordan, Utah, where a last-minute bout of flu kept them from the grand marshal’s post in the Veterans Day parade. But their appearance later at a high school before an estimated 1,500 people earned them a standing ovation, Virginia June said.
“They don’t want to be famous. They just are,” she says for her husband, who is in good health except for a failing memory.
Alfred Peaches, 80, of Winslow, Ariz., traveled to Lancaster, Calif., to appear in a Veterans Day parade. He says he enjoys the gratitude now widely expressed.
There are no monetary rewards, the men say, except paid travel expenses.
Kenji Kawano, a photographer who lives in the Navajo capital of Window Rock, Ariz., is among the most respected chroniclers of the Code Talkers. He says he is awed by their humility.
“I really respect them,” he says. “They didn’t think about what their government did to them. They went to war to defend their country. I think it’s great they are invited all over America to speak. They won’t be here forever. The past two years, nobody is marching (in the local parade). Everybody is on the float.”
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
