78 years ago, the first Navajo Code Talkers joined the Marine Corps [View all]

On May 5, 1942, 29 men arrived at Recruit Depot San Diego for basic training in the Marine Corps. They would go on to develop and implement an unbreakable code that was used across the Pacific theater of World War II — one which helped mask the movements of American forces from Guadalcanal, to Tarawa, Peleliu, and onward to Iwo Jima.

These men were the first of the Navajo Code Talkers.


"Early on the morning of May 4, 1942 the original twenty-nine Navajo Code Talkers boarded a bus at Fort Defiance and headed for Fort Wingate near Gallup, New Mexico," reads the post. "After lunch in the dining hall at Fort Wingate, the Navajo recruits were sworn into the U.S. Marine Corps."

The idea for the Navajo Code Talker program came from Philip Johnston, a World War I veteran and the son of a missionary who grew up on a Navajo reservation. According to the National Archives, Johnston convinced Marine Maj. Gen. Clayton B. Vogel that the Navajo language — due to it being largely unwritten — would be indecipherable to the Axis powers. Additionally, Johnston argued that the Navajo nation was large enough to supply enough recruits for the program, and isolated enough that it was unlikely that many people outside the tribe had learned the language.


https://taskandpurpose.com/history/navajo-code-talkers-enlistment-date