Prelude to the Story of the Navajo Code Talkers

Search for the Navajo Code Talkers by Sally McClain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A slim volume tracing the research done by Sally McClain for her book, Navajo Weapon. It follows her meetings with surviving Code Talkers and/or their family members; her travels to Washington, DC to search Naval and other governmental archives for records about this top secret program to use Native speaking Navajo to form an alphabet and vocabulary that would be totally unbreakable by our Japanese enemies in the Pacific Theatre of WW II; her efforts to organize all the pieces of information she gathered over several years into a cogent story of the success of the progam; and the culmination of her work, a published book and a celebratory banquet in Gallup, New Mexico the night before the annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. Absolutely absorbing and enticing. After reading this, I could not wait to begin Navajo Weapon, which I have almost completed.

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