Navajo Code Talkers were recognized in a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in 2001. Wednesday\u2019s ceremony corrected the lack of recognition for hundreds of code talkers from 33 tribes, who were finally awarded the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an honor to celebrate the tremendous contribution by Native American Code Talkers,\u201d said U.S. Senator Tom Udall, (D-Colo.) \u201cToday we awarded the highest congressional honor to these veterans who helped us develop a code so strong it couldn\u2019t be cracked. I\u2019m proud to represent these veterans, who include members of the Acoma and Laguna Pueblos in New Mexico \u2013 many of whom, along with their families, joined us at the ceremony.\u201d<\/p>\n
Code Talkers are heralded for contributing their language towards secret communications that confused the enemy and gave the U.S. a major advantage in the Pacific war-time theater.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is often said that America\u2019s diversity makes her strong. And during two world wars, this country\u2019s cultural diversity contributed to American military strength in a very real and concrete way,\u201d Udall said. \u201cWe owe a debt of gratitude to these veterans. Their patriotism and honor make us proud.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a long time coming,\u201d Leroy Shingoitewa, 71, told the Washington Post. Shingoitewa is a member of the Hopi Tribe who has several uncles who served as code talkers. \u201cWhen they came home, they didn\u2019t talk much about it. Finally, it\u2019s become known.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Code Talkers were recognized in a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony in 2001. Wednesday\u2019s ceremony corrected the lack of recognition for hundreds of code talkers from 33 tribes, who were finally awarded the nation\u2019s highest civilian honor. \u201cIt was an honor to celebrate the tremendous contribution by Native American Code Talkers,\u201d said U.S. Senator Tom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[4707,1974,912,610,1147],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-122936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-armed-conflict","tag-minority-group","tag-national-or-ethnic-minority","tag-social-issues","tag-war"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122936"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=122936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}