Scope and Contents Bedoni was with the Marine Corps from 1942-1946. He was only seventeen when he joined, but he lied about his age. After boot camp and code talk training, he became a paratrooper. The Marines sent him to Guadalcanal, Vella Lavella, and eventually into Saipan and Okinawa. He remained a Private First Class and was never offered a promotion. After he returned home, he went through a tradtional tribal purification ceremony to purge his mind of his war experiences.

Scope and Contents Williams joined the Marines in 1943 but did not become a code talker until 1944. He was very active in this assignment, sometimes sending messages night and day. Later, he was given charge of the communications journal. While at war, Williams carried a small bag of corn pollen, which Navajos consider sacred. He states that his son also took one to Vietnam and came back safely.

Scope and Contents King came from Shiprock, New Mexico. He volunteered for the code talker's service and was in the second group of Navajos trained for the project. He helped the other Navajos learn the code and became a communications instructor. During the interview, he described the language used and why some men were rejected from being code talkers. The code talkers were not kept out of danger during the war. King was sent to Peleliu where rough fighting was taking place. He received a bad heart...

Scope and Contents Billey, from Farmington, NM, joined the Marines in 1943. He received training at Camp Pendleton and Camp Elliott. Some of it was advanced infantry training as well as code training. Afterwards, he was sent to New Zealand and then Tarawa, but was not used much as a code talker there. He was then sent to Hawaii and was used constantly as a code talker. When the war was over, he was sent to Japan. In the end, he states that he used more English than Navajo in his code work during the war. He was...

Scope and Contents Gorman tells of being with a group of code talkers when they ran out of food. There were no supplies for several days.

Scope and Contents Paul Blatchford, from Tuba City, AZ, joined the Marines as a volunteer. He trained as a code talker, and because he had operated a two-way radio for the Bureau of Indian Affairs before the war, he taught the men how to keep the radios in repair. He also taught radio operation and advance code for nine months. Once, he asked for a promotion and a transfer, but did not get either, so he went AWOL. He returned after a time, and Phillip Johnston was very angry with him and so sent him to be...

Scope and Contents John Bennally, a native of Fort Defiance, was twenty-four when he joined the Marines. He was one of the first group of twenty-nine to be recruited, and so helped establish the original code. He was assigned to stay in the United States and recruit other Navajos. He chose them from other units of service according to how much education they had. They passed the same physical tests that the other Marines did. Bennally was not sent overseas until 1944. He helped train men on Hawaii and then was...

Scope and Contents W. Dean Wilson, now a judge of the courts of the Navajo nation, was a Staff Sergeant in the US Marine Corps Reserve. He joined when he was sixteen, in 1942, and was one of the original twenty-nine code talkers. He had trouble with Morse code at first, but the other codes he learned easily. He was sent to Tarawa and was involved in heavy fighting. As a code talker, he had to carry extra loads of batteries for the radios, which were heavy. He was treated well by the other Marines and helped with...