CIBOLA COUNTY, N.M. – When Americans recognize Navajo Code Talkers Day on Aug. 14, western New Mexico has a particularly close connection to the story being remembered.
On May 4, 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits selected for the U.S. Marine Corps' Code Talker program were sworn in at Fort Wingate, northwest of Grants.
Those young Marines would become the foundation of a communications system that used the Navajo language to transmit sensitive battlefield information during World War II. The code they helped develop allowed Marines to rapidly communicate troop movements, tactics and other critical information in the Pacific without enemy forces being able to decipher the messages.
Their service carried an extraordinary contradiction.
Many Navajo children of that generation had attended boarding schools where they were discouraged or punished for speaking their own language. During the war, the United States turned to that same language because of its complexity and because relatively few people outside the Navajo Nation understood it.
The first recruits developed military terms for words and concepts that did not have direct equivalents in Navajo and created an encoded alphabet for transmitting information. Additional Navajo Marines were subsequently trained as Code Talkers, carrying messages during some of the war's most important Pacific campaigns.
For decades, much of their contribution remained outside public view because the Code Talker program was classified after the war.
President Ronald Reagan proclaimed Aug. 14, 1982, as Navajo Code Talkers Day, recognizing the Navajo Marines and the role their language played in the Allied victory.
That history remains particularly tangible in this part of New Mexico. Fort Wingate, where the original 29 took their oath, sits only a short drive from Cibola County.
The Cibola County Historical Society is also encouraging residents to learn more. A recorded presentation by Judith Avila about the Navajo Code Talkers is available for public viewing at the Cibola County History Museum during its regular Thursday through Saturday hours, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.