The National Archives holds substantial documentation of the Navajo Code Talker program — records from the Marine Corps, from the Office of Naval Intelligence, from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and from other federal agencies that touched the program during and after the war.

These records are not exhaustive.

The classified nature of the program during the war and for more than two decades afterward meant that some documentation was handled with restrictions that affected its preservation and availability.

Some records that would have provided more precise information about the number of Code Talkers, the specific codes used at specific times and places, and the operational assessments of the program’s effectiveness are either restricted, damaged, or simply not complete.

The records that are available support the broad outlines of the Code Talker story as it has been told.

The recruitment of the original twenty-nine in 1942.