Some Code Talkers found ways to build meaningful postwar lives.

Some used the GI Bill to pursue education, a path that was more accessible to veterans than it would otherwise have been.

Some found employment through the social networks that military service created — connections to other veterans, to organizations, to employers who valued the discipline and reliability that military training produced.

Some returned to traditional Diné ways of life on the reservation, finding meaning and continuity in the community they had fought for.

Others struggled.

The trauma of Pacific combat — which was severe, by any measure — had no formal name in 1945 and no established treatment pathway.