How many Navajo Code Talkers were killed in World War 2?

Answer 1

As there were only around 300 code talkers and the operation was kept secret for years after the war, casualties are hard to come by. The stats are 13, but I never put much faith in stats or percentages. There were also other tribes as "Code Talkers": 17 Chippewa and Oneida, 17 Comanche, 19 Sac and Fox (Mesquakie) and later in 1941, 11 Hopi. The Code Talkers came from mainly the Northwest part of Arizona; the largest Reservation in America. (Here's a kicker you may enjoy.): Years ago most of the outside world considered the Indians in the U.S. to be ignorant, red savages. In fact, the gov't placed the Navao Indian Tribe in this area bringing them up from Oklahama! The gov't hoped that the harsh environment would destroy them completely. Little did the U.S. Gov't know it was giving the Navajo nation their ancestral homeland back! It was a civil engineer named Philip Johnson who lived in L.A. California. He grew up on the Navajo Indian Reserv because his parents were Protestant missionaries there. Johnson knew enough about the Navajo language to believe it would make a complex code to send important military messages safely. Johnson went to the Marine Corp signal office and the rest is history. Most of the Navajos were in their early teens and military regulations required 18, but they were in such great need they accepted some who were only 14 years old. 400 Navajo Indians were trained as "Code Talkers." The Navajos served on most of the U.S. island invasions, including Guadalcanal, Tinian, Saipan, Bouqanville, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima. Without the Code Talkers the U.S. would never have captured Iwo Jima. There, 6 code talker networks operated around the clock, sending and receiving over 800 critical messages without errors. Each code talker was assigned a "Belakana" (white man) for a body guard. No code talker was ever captured by the Japanese, but because of their somewhat Oriental appearing features, they were often mistaken for the enemy by their own troops. Japanese soldiers would sometimes take uniforms off dead U.S. soldiers, put them on, and tried to infiltrate the U.S. lines. Seven of the Navajo Code Talkers were killed in combat and many received Purple Heart Medals for being wounded in action. After the war was over, the Navajo code was classified as "Top Secret" and kept that way for 23 years. Not until 1968 was the secret classification dropped. It is a remarkable feat, forever recorded in history, that these so-called primitive, ignorant, red savages invented the only unbreakable military war code. Remember, most of them were just teenage school boys. The Navajo Code Talkers were certainly WW2 heroes.. How did the U.S. gov't reward these gallant Native American Navajo Indians? They were denied all their G.I. benefits under the G.I. Bill that covered all other veterans! The governments excuse: Because the Navajo Indians live on the Indian Reservation they are occupying Federal land. Therefore, that "somehow" nullifies their G.I. Bill of Rights. by: Cecil Owen (WW2 Vet)