Speaking of WW II,
Last of Navajo code breakers dies
Chester Nez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died of kidney failure. He was 93.
Judy Avila, who helped Mr Nez write his memoirs, said his death was unexpected.
Mr Nez was in the 10th grade when a Marine recruiter went to the Navajo reservation looking for young men who were fluent in Navajo and English.
He told the Associated Press in a 2010 interview that he kept the decision to enlist a secret from his family and lied about his age.
Mr Nez became part of the 382nd Platoon tasked with developing a code that stumped the Japanese. Hundreds of Navajos followed in the footsteps of the original Code Talkers.
"It's one of the greatest parts of history that we used our own native language during World War II," Mr Nez told the AP. "We're very proud of it."
Of the 250 Navajos who turned up at Fort Defiance, Arizona - then a US Army base - 29 were selected to join the first all-Native American unit of Marines. They were inducted in May 1942.
Using Navajo words for red soil, war chief, clan, braided hair, beads, ant and hummingbird, for example, they came up with a glossary of more than 200 terms which was later expanded, and an alphabet.
Mr Nez said he was concerned that the code would not work. At the time, few non-Navajos spoke the language. Even Navajos who did could not understand the code. It proved impenetrable.
The Navajos trained in radio communications were walking copies of the code. Each message read aloud by a Code Talker was immediately destroyed.
"The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did," Mr Nez said in 2010.
After the Second World War, Mr Nez volunteered to serve two more years during the Korean War. He retired in 1974 after a 25-year career as a painter at the Veterans Hospital in Albuquerque.
He was eager to tell his family about his role as a Code Talker, Ms Avila said, but he could not. Their mission was not declassified until 1968.
The accolades came much later. The Code Talkers are now widely celebrated. The original group received Congressional Gold Medals in 2001, and a film based on the Code Talkers was released the following year. They have appeared on television and in parades and routinely are asked to speak to veterans groups and students.
Mr Nez threw the opening pitch at a 2004 Major League Baseball game and offered a blessing for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. In 2012, he received a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, where he abandoned his studies in fine arts after tuition assistance he received for his military service ran out.
Despite having both legs partially amputated, confining him to a wheelchair, Ms Avila said Mr Nez loved to travel and tell his story.
"He always wanted to go, he loved meeting people," she said. "And with something like kidney failure, it comes really gradually. At the end, he was really tired."
