Last of the Code Talkers passes

[sburke]

Apparently he was the last of the original development group

http://news.yahoo.com/last-navajo-code-talkers-dies-mexico-013220740.html

ALBUQUERQUE N.M. (Reuters) - The last of 29 Navajo Americans who developed an unbreakable code that helped Allied forces win World War Two died in New Mexico on Wednesday of kidney failure at the age of 93.

Chester Nez was the last survivor of an original group of 29 Navajos recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps to create a code based on their language that the Japanese could not crack.

His son, Michael Nez, said his father died peacefully in his sleep at their home in Albuquerque.

"He had been battling kidney disease and it seems like the disease won," Michael Nez told Reuters. "He's the last of a great era, a great part of history."

About 400 code talkers would go on to use their unique battlefield cipher to encrypt messages sent from field telephones and radios throughout the Pacific theater during the war.

It was regarded as secure from Japanese military code breakers because the language was spoken only in the U.S. Southwest, was known by fewer than 30 non-Navajo people, and had no written form.

The Navajos' skill, speed and accuracy under fire in ferocious battles from the Marshall Islands to Iwo Jima are credited with saving thousands of U.S. servicemen's lives and helping shorten the war. Their work was celebrated in the 2002 movie "Windtalkers."