Last of Navajo World War II ‘code talkers’ dies in New Mexico

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/04/last-of-navajo-world-war-ii-code-talkers-dies-in-new-mexico/



Last of Navajo World War II ‘code talkers’ dies in New Mexico
By Reuters
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 16:29 EDT

ALBUQUERQUE N.M. (Reuters) – The last of 29 Navajo Americans who developed an unbreakable code that helped Allied forces win the second World War died in New Mexico on Wednesday of kidney failure at the age of 93.

Chester Nez was the last remaining survivor of an original group of 29 Navajos recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps to create a code based on their language that the Japanese could not crack.

The president of the Navajo Nation, Ben Shelly, said his office had been in touch with the family, and that Nez had died peacefully in his sleep.

“It saddens me to hear the last of the original code talkers has died,” Shelly told Reuters. “I am ordering flags to be flown at half mast beginning tomorrow … We are proud of these young men in defending the country they loved using their Navajo language.”

[TexasProgresive]

1. A friend told me last week that his uncle Henry was a code talker.

Henry was not Navajo. Evidently Quite a few Native American tribes were "code talkers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker

A memoir has been written by an actual code talker. Chester Nez (ca. 1921 – June 4, 2014) was the last survivor of the original Navajo code talkers in World War II. He helped to develop the famous code and then took it into battle to prove that it would work. His memoir is Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII.[29]

May they rest in peace.

[gademocrat7]

2. R.I.P. Sir.