FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE		CONTACT: ANNE SMART
JUNE 12, 2006		615.736.5295

CONGRESS REMEMBERS THE LIFE OF WORLD WAR II
CODE TALKER ROBERT YAZZIE

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The life of World War II veteran and code talker Robert H. Yazzie was remembered by Congress in remarks made by U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper earlier this week.

Yazzie, who served his country from 1942 to 1945 as a Navajo code talker, passed away in Madison, TN this Memorial Day, Monday May 29, 2006. He was 81.

"Mr. Yazzie was always very humble about his contributions to the war effort,” Cooper said in his remarks. “After the war, he never received public recognition because code talkers were considered such valuable assets to the military. In 2003, I had the great honor of awarding Mr. Yazzie a Congressional Silver Medal for Distinguished Service at a special ceremony in Nashville.”

Born on June 1, 1924 in Arizona, Yazzie grew up in an Episcopal orphanage on a Navajo Indian reservation. He enlisted in the Marines at the age of 17 to serve his nation as a code talker in World War II. He and the other code talkers used their native language to develop a code that was used to communicate commands, tactics and troop movements of the Marines in the Pacific.

There were only about 400 Native Americans trained as code talkers during World War II and their contributions to the war effort were critical in the Pacific theater. The Navajo code was used in every Marine assault and it helped the U.S. win victories at key battles including Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Peleliu. In the battle of Iwo Jima, the code talkers sent and received over 800 messages without a single miscommunication. In fact, the Japanese never once decoded the code talkers’ messages throughout the duration of the war.

"We just sent messages,” Mr. Yazzie said in 2003. “We were sending codes on the radio, and we would just talk on the radio using my language.”

The Navajo code was especially effective because Navajo was an unwritten language, spoken by a relatively small number or people, limited to small geographic area in the Southwest United States. At the time of the war, only 30 non-Navajos were believed to understand the language. In addition, the code talkers could transmit messages with unparalleled speed and accuracy. During tests conducted by the Marines, code talkers could encode, transmit, and uncode a 3-line message in 20 seconds while machines took 30 minutes to do the same.

After the war, Yazzie was discharged as a Private First Class in 1945. He married his wife, Carrie, and moved to Nashville shortly thereafter. He raised a family and earned a living as a welder. Yazzie battled diabetes for the last 35 years of his life, suffered heart problems and passed away peacefully at in his home in Madison.

"I am proud to salute the remarkable life and contributions of Mr. Robert Yazzie,” Cooper said. “His legacy of courage and patriotism will live on.”

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