Navajo Code Talker and Marine Veteran Thomas Begay received a COVID-19 vaccine shot at a VA medical center on Feb 2. The Code Talkers were a group of 29 Navajo men recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps in WWII to develop unbreakable codes based on their Indigenous languages | NowThis

The Code Talkers used native languages to send military messages before World War II. Choctaw, for example, was successfully used during World War I. But the Marine Corps needed an “unbreakable” code for its island-hopping campaign in the Pacific. Navajo, which was unwritten and known by few outside the tribe, seemed to fit the Corps’ requirements. Twenty-nine Navajos were recruited to develop the code in 1942. They took their language and developed a “Type One Code” that assigned a Navajo word