Navajo Code Talkers, Saipan, Northern Marianas, June 1944

"Philip Johnston, a civil engineer for the city of Los Angeles, proposed the use of Navajo to the United States Marine Corps at the beginning of World War II. Johnston, a World War I veteran, was raised on the Navajo reservation as the son of a missionary to the Navajos, and was one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Because Navajo has a complex grammar, it is not nearly mutually intelligible enough with even its closest relatives within the Na-Dene family to provide meaningful information, and was at this time an unwritten language, Johnston saw Navajo as answering the military requirement for an undecipherable code."

Date unknown.

Taken on 1944-06-15
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Uploaded by northway on 2014-09-07
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