Tribute to Navajo Code Talkers

More than four hundred Diné Marines built a code out of their own language that Japan never broke, and that helped win the Pacific war. The bitter irony sits underneath the honor: many of these men had been beaten or had their mouths washed with soap for speaking Navajo in government boarding schools, the same language the Marines then begged them to weaponize. Chester Nez and the first twenty-nine devised it in 1942. Dedicated in 1989, this was the first permanent tribute in the country to the Code Talkers.

What the plaque says

This tribute represents the spirit of the Navajo Code Talkers, a group of more than 400 U.S. Marines who bravely served their country during World War II., Their mission: to utilize the Navajo language in the creation of an unbreakable secret code. Between 1942 and 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers used this code and their skills as radio operators to provide a secure method of communications vital to America's victory., Among many Native Americans the flute is a communications tool used to signal the end of confrontation and the coming of peace.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Heard Museum — 0.6 mi
  The Native Southwest, told in the first person
• Phoenix — 2.2 mi
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• Taliesin West — 16 mi
  Frank Lloyd Wright's desert masterwork, grown from the ground it stands on

More markers nearby

• United States Indian Vocational Training School — 1.2 mi
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