I’ve always found the history of the Navajo Code Talkers fascinating. A few months back I wrote a blog detailing some of the history behind the Code Talkers
I am very happy to share the news that on February 28, 2009 and staying until March 28, 2009 is a wonderful exhibit called
“Our Fathers, Our Grandfathers, Our Heroes: Navajo Code Talkers of World War Il
on display at the John Wesley Powell Museum, 6 North Lake Powell Blvd, Page, Arizona.
From the press release of the Powell Museum:
“In World War II, throughout the Pacific campaigns, some four hundred Navajo men, mostly teenage boys, had developed and utilized an unbreakable code in their native language. As members of the elite United States Marine Corps forces, their ingenuity baffled Japanese cryptographers and helped to win the war in the Pacific. The code they developed and used in the island hopping campaigns is a tribute to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Navajo people to adapt their language and culture to fit a need that positively impacted a world in chaos in the 1940s.
In 2000-2001, in partnership with the University of New Mexico School-to-Work program, the Navajo Nation Museum and the Navajo Code Talkers Association, the Circle of Light Navajo Educational Project coordinated a year-long oral history project with students from Wingate High School, Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Through classroom instruction, students learned about the history of the program as well as social and economic conditions on the Navajo reservation in the 1940s. They conducted interviews with Navajo Code Talkers and were mentored by the Navajo Nation Museum in the development of an exhibit. The original exhibit was on display at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona. Then, by invitation, it was displayed at the New Mexico State Capital Rotunda. In 2005, the Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation Department placed the exhibit on permanent display at the Monument Valley Visitor’s Center Tribal Park. The traveling version of this exhibit, launched in the fall of 2007, is made possible by grants from the Arizona Humanities Council, Salt River Project, Arizona Public Service, New Mexico Humanities Council, and the Public Service of New Mexico.
Join us Saturday February 28, 2009 for the opening reception of the traveling exhibition “Our Fathers, Our Grandfathers, Our Heroes: Navajo Code Talkers of World War II.” The exhibit will be on display at the Powell Museum from February 28 to March 28, 2009.”
