Navajo vets glad to see little-told story come to screen

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- When the president placed Congressional Gold Medals around the necks of four Navajo men last summer, it thrust the World War II veterans into the limelight after 56 years of relative silence.

Those four, and one too ill to make the trip to Washington, are the only survivors of an elite group of 29 communications specialists -- the Navajo Code Talkers -- to whom many credit the Allied victory over Japan in 1945. The men developed an uncrackable code based on the Navajo language.

Now, Hollywood is trying to deliver their tale in a big-budget film to audiences worldwide.

"Windtalkers," an MGM movie starring Nicolas Cage and directed by John Woo, opens Friday. Cast members include Adam Beach, a Saulteaux Indian from Manitoba, Canada, and Roger Willie, a Navajo, as well as 50 Navajo extras and a cameo appearance by Albert Smith, a veteran code talker.

Smith said that even though the movie fictionalizes some of the code talkers' story, he's still glad to see it being shared at last.

"It's a good story on the basis of the code," he said.

Smith was one of the original 29 code talkers recruited by the Marine Corps in 1942. Eventually, about 300 Navajo Marines were trained to use the code.

Few people outside the Navajo Reservation had even heard the language, and the Japanese never broke the code, which used Navajo words to represent letters or words in English.

Their accomplishments have been largely absent from history books because the code was classified until 1968.

"It was top secret from the training. You couldn't take notes or anything," said Sam Billison, president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, a veterans group.

Didn't tell war stories

Even today, Smith doesn't talk much about his wartime experiences. Tales of battle and destruction are not part of the Navajos' oral tradition, he said.

"The elders asked us not to talk about our war stories."

The bulk of the film's action takes place during the Battle of Saipan, a key step in the United States' Pacific island-hopping campaign.

Smith, 77, appears in the movie at a bus station while Beach is leaving to join the Marines. In real life, Smith delivered coded messages about troop movements and supplies on the Marshall and Marion islands.

In the movie, the bodyguards are given orders to protect the code at all costs, including killing code talkers if the Japanese tried to capture them.

Bill Toledo, a code talker with the 3rd Marine Division on the Solomon Islands and in Guam, said his bodyguard was with him at all times.

Smith, however, said he never had a bodyguard and knew few other code talkers who did.

In reality, "none of the code talkers were captured," Toledo said. "But you know how Hollywood is."