World War II

Five surviving Navajo code talkers met with Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon yesterday.

Pace told the men, “You all are legends of our corps and Marines who demonstrated the resilience and capacity that made an enormous difference during the course of the war.”

Altogether there were more than 400 Navajos trained between 1942 and 1945 to take part in operations in the Pacific Theatre.

In 1995 a permanent code talkers’ exhibit was dedicated at the Pentagon and in July 2001 the 29 original code talkers were presented with Congressional Gold Medals by President George W. Bush.

The men who visited with Pace are recipients of the Silver Congressional Medal and included:

Cpl. Alfred Peaches (82)
Cpl. Joe Morris, Sr. (82)
Pvt. Arthur J. Hubbard, Sr. (95)
Pvt. George Willie (81)
Pfc. Samue Smith (82)

Fewer than 70 of these Navajo veterans survive today. Their organization, the Navajo Code Talkers Association, maintains a website here, although it seems pretty badly out of date. (Wikipedia offers a reasonably decent article and a nice list of links to external sources.)

Certainly the work of these men was among the most unique in the overall panorma of the war effort and it’s good to see they’ve lived long and honored lives.

I especially liked this quotation from Samuel Smith’s son, Michael. “If you’d ask my Dad about the code and how it was for him in battle, he will tell you that he was a Marine first. That was his job: to be a Marine.”

(For the source article from the Student Operated Press, click here.)

WWII, Navajo, code talkers, General Peter Pace, Pentagon