Formal governmental recognition of the Navajo Code Talkers came in phases, each one important, none entirely adequate to what the program had meant and what the delay had cost.

In August 2001, President George W.

Bush awarded Congressional Gold Medals — the highest honor Congress can bestow on civilians — to the original twenty-nine Navajo Code Talkers.

The ceremony was held in Washington, D.C., and was attended by those of the original twenty-nine who were still living, by the families of those who had died, and by many of the subsequent Code Talkers who had served in the expanded program.

Of the original twenty-nine men who had developed the code and deployed it at Guadalcanal, only five were still alive in 2001.

The other twenty-four had died without receiving formal governmental recognition of what they had done.