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Chester Nez (January 23, 1921 – June 4, 2014) was the last original Navajo code talker who served in the United States Marine Corps during the war. He was assigned to the 382nd Infantry Regiment at Camp Pendleton in California where he and 28 other Navajo were tasked with creating a code for communications during WWII. The Navajo language was chosen because its syntax and tonal qualities were nearly impossible for a non-Navajo to learn, and it had no written form. Nez stated the developers used everyday words, in order to easily memorize and retain them. In 1942, he was among the code talkers to be shipped out to Guadalcanal, where they worked in teams of two—one to send and receive, the other to operate the radio and listen for errors. Nez also fought in Bougainville, Guam, Anguar, and Peleliu. He was honorably discharged as a Private First Class in 1945 and returned to serve stateside in the Korean War from which he was discharged as a corporal.
In 2001, Nez was one of the five living code talkers who received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush:
Today, we marked a moment of shared history and shared victory. We recall a story that all Americans can celebrate and every American should know. It is a story of ancient people called to serve in a modern war. It is a story of one unbreakable oral code of the Second World War, messages travelling by field radio on Iwo Jima in the very language heard across the Colorado plateau centuries ago.— President George W. Bush
Nez died on June 4, 2014, from kidney failure in Albuquerque, aged 93.
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