The Last Living Navajo Code Talker Has Died

Chester Nez was one of 29 of the original Code Talkers recruited by the Marine Corp during the Second World War to develop an unbreakable code using Navajo. The Corp had decided that the characteristics of the Navajo language were almost impossible for a non-Navajo to learn.

As a child he was forced to attend a boarding school that punished him for speaking his native language. Perhaps war in the Pacific would have gone differently had Nez's teachers been successful in obliterating his language.

He died peacefully at his home Wednesday. He was 93.