Death of US Navajo code talker - 28th October 2024

One of the last Navajo Code Talkers of the Second World War has passed away aged 107. Born in the Navajo community in Arizona, John Kinsel Sr enlisted in the Marines in 1942. He joined around 400 Navajo men selected as Code Talkers to provide secure military communications.

Extremely complex and used only on the lands of the American Southwest, Navajo is primarily a spoken language. This Native American language has syntax, tonal qualities and dialects which mean it requires in depth training before it can be understood.

Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary, had grown up on the Navajo reservation and saw an opportunity. Fluent in Navajo, Johnston recognised its suitability as a military code language and convinced a commanding General of the Pacific fleet to trial the language.

At a demonstration, Navajo trainees encoded, transmitted and decoded a 3 line message in English in under 20 seconds whilst machines took 30 minutes to perform the same task. Following this impressive display, the Marines recruited 29 Navajo men to develop the initial Navajo code.

The first code assigned 211 frequently used military terms with Navajo names, such as ‘iron fish’, which meant ‘submarine’ and ‘hummingbird’ which stood for ‘fighter plane’. In addition, a new phonetic alphabet for English was created, which allowed other words to be spelled out in secret, using Navajo vocabulary.

The Marines recruited and trained 400 Navajo Code Talkers. They operated across the Pacific sending and decoding messages which appeared to be a string of unrelated words. Japanese code breakers never managed to decipher the intercepted messages.

The work of the Windtalkers, as they were nicknamed, was only declassified in 1968. In 1982, President Regan declared 14th August to be Navajo Code Talkers Day in recognition of their service.

Just two Navajo Code Talkers now survive, but their testimonies can be heard at a permanent exhibit at the Pentagon.