We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II

Hear, O children of remembrance, the words of Rick Renzi, who declared: “We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans.” In this saying, he calls us to honor what the world once despised and to cherish what was nearly silenced. For in the very tongues that had been mocked, banned, and forbidden, there arose a weapon so unbreakable that it helped turn the tide of war.

The Navajo Code Talkers were young men of the Diné Nation, who in the 1940s left their homes on the mesas and deserts of the Southwest to serve a nation that had not always served them. Their language, ancient and sacred, became the basis of an unbreakable code used by the United States Marines. Against the might of Japanese cryptographers, who cracked every other code devised, the Navajo tongue stood invincible. Orders were passed, strategies shared, and lives preserved, all because of a language once deemed unfit for schools.

Renzi’s words reveal a great paradox of history. For decades, Native children had been taken to boarding schools, their hair cut, their traditions ridiculed, their languages beaten out of them. They were told that their mother tongue was worthless, a relic of the past. Yet in the crucible of World War II, that same language became priceless. It was not English, nor machines, nor ciphers, but the voices of the Navajo that gave the Marines in the Pacific a secret strength. Thus, the stone that the builders had rejected became the cornerstone of victory.

Consider the Battle of Iwo Jima, where American forces struggled against fierce Japanese resistance. The Code Talkers transmitted over eight hundred error-free messages in two days, coordinating movements and artillery with speed and precision. Commanders later declared that without them, the battle—and perhaps the war itself—would have cost far more lives. Here, the power of language was not cultural ornament, but shield and sword, saving thousands through its secrecy and strength.

But Renzi’s lesson goes beyond war. He reminds us that Native languages carry more than words; they carry memory, tradition, and worldview. To destroy a language is to wound a people’s soul; to preserve it is to preserve their wisdom. In honoring the Code Talkers, we are called not only to remember their service but to respect the tongues they spoke, to ensure that such languages do not vanish into silence. For they are treasures, not just to one people, but to all humanity.

The truth is plain: the security of America was safeguarded by the very voices once suppressed. What irony, and what justice, that the survival of the nation came through the endurance of a culture it had sought to erase. This is why Renzi speaks with reverence—because in the story of the Code Talkers lies both warning and hope. The warning: never despise the heritage of a people. The hope: even what is rejected may one day redeem.

Therefore, O children of tomorrow, take this lesson: cherish the languages of the earth, especially those threatened with extinction. Support those who labor to teach them, honor those who speak them, and understand that every tongue holds within it a unique vision of the world. For you know not when the day will come that such a language may not only preserve identity, but protect life itself.

So remember the wisdom of Renzi’s words: “We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers.” Let their story be your guide. Honor the cultures that endure, defend the languages that remain, and see in them not relics of the past but guardians of the future. For the voices once silenced became the voices of victory—and so may the voices of today become the strength of tomorrow.