Their families accepted the medals on their behalf.

In 2008, Congress passed legislation awarding Congressional Silver Medals to the hundreds of other Navajo Code Talkers who had served in the expanded program — the men who had trained on the code after the original twenty-nine developed it and who had carried it through the campaigns of 1943, 1944, and 1945.

The legislation was specific in its historical accounting.

It acknowledged the Code Talkers’ service, the nature of the code they had used, the campaigns in which they had served, and the decades of classified silence that had delayed recognition.

It was, in its way, an official acknowledgment that the delay itself had been a failure — that men who had served with distinction had spent decades unable to receive the recognition their service warranted.

The medals were real, and the ceremony was meaningful.