The program was explicitly built on a code added to the Navajo language, not simply on Navajo speech.

The number of men who served is best expressed as an estimate — the range of 375 to 420 that the National Archives documents — rather than as a precise figure.

Japanese intelligence did not break the code, but this is documented as a historical finding rather than as something that requires no explanation — it reflects the specific characteristics of the language and the code built on top of it, not some mysterious or mystical quality.

The archives also hold the voices of the Code Talkers themselves, in oral histories recorded after declassification.

These recordings — men describing their training, their deployments, their experiences transmitting and receiving under fire — are the most immediate connection available to the human reality of what the program was.

They are worth engaging with directly for anyone who wants to understand the Code Talker story beyond its popular outlines.