Not the code details or the operational assessments or the specific battles.

The language itself — what it took to keep it alive, and what keeping it alive made possible when the moment came.

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The Navajo Nation Before the Recruiters Arrived

To understand why Navajo men enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942 — and why the Marine Corps specifically sought them — it helps to understand what life on the Navajo Nation looked like in the years immediately before the war, and what the federal government’s relationship with the Navajo people had produced by that point.