John Kinsel Sr., one of the last surviving Navajo Code Talkers who broadcast messages based on the tribe’s native language during World War II, has died. He was 107.
Officials with the Navajo Nation in Window Rock announced Kinsel’s death on Saturday.
Chief President Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-mast until sunset on October 27 in Kinsel’s honor.
“Mr. Kinsel was a Marine who courageously and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the utmost responsibility as a Navajo Code Talker,” Nygren said in a statement Sunday.
After Kinsel’s death, only two original Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
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Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the Marines to serve as Code Talkers during the war, broadcasting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.
They confounded Japanese military cryptologists, who routinely broke U.S. military codes during World War II.
“It was taken for granted that they could interpret anything we sent out,” Richard Bonham, a World War II radio operator, told “60 Minutes” in 2002.
The Code Talkers also participated in every raid the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.
The Code Talkers transmitted thousands of messages without error regarding Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics, and other communications crucial to the ultimate outcome of the war.
The language lacked modern military terms, so they came up with creative solutions, such as replacing radar with owl – a bird that can see far away – and hand grenade with potato – because of their similar shapes.
Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite Code Talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982, and the August 14 holiday honors all tribes involved in the war effort.
The day is a state holiday in Arizona and a holiday for the Navajo Nation on the vast reservation that covers parts of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.
