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PHOENIX (AP) – It’s been 80 years since the first Navajo code talkers joined the Marines, relaying messages using a code based on their then-unwritten native language to confuse Japanese military cryptologists during World War II, and Thomas H. Begay, one of the last living members of the group, still remembers the fight. <\/p>\n
“It was the hardest thing to learn,” Begay, 98, said Sunday at a ceremony in Phoenix to mark the anniversary. “But we were able to devise a code that could not be broken by the enemy of the United States of America.”<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the US Marines to serve as code talkers during the war. Begay is one of three still alive to talk about it.<\/p>\n
The Code Talkers participated in every assault the Marines led in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945, including Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.<\/p>\n
They sent thousands of error-free messages about Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics, and other communications crucial to the ultimate outcome of the war.<\/p>\n
President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982, and the August 14 holiday honors all tribes associated with the war effort.<\/p>\n
It is also an Arizona state holiday and a Navajo Nation holiday on the large reservation that occupies parts of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah.<\/p>\n
Begay and his family came from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Phoenix for Sunday’s event at Wesley Bolin Plaza where a Navajo Code Talker statue is on display.<\/p>\n