The Navajo men who were recruited understood this contradiction.

Some have spoken about it in interviews and oral histories recorded after the declassification of the program.

Their responses varied — some expressed a form of quiet pride that something the government had tried to take from them had proven so useful that the government needed it back, while others expressed more complicated feelings about serving a country that had simultaneously tried to erase their language and their culture while relying on both to win a war.

What none of them could do, for more than two decades after the war, was speak about this publicly.

The classification of the program meant that the contradiction was, officially, a secret.

Iwo Jima and the Weight of the System’s Importance