One of the last Navajo Code Talkers from World War II dies at 107

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — John Kinsel Sr., one of the last surviving Navajo Code Talkers who broadcast messages based on the tribe’s native language during World War II, has died. He was 107.

Officials with the Navajo Nation in Window Rock announced Kinsel’s death on Saturday.

Chief President Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-mast until sunset on October 27 in Kinsel’s honor.

“Mr. Kinsel was a Marine who courageously and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the utmost responsibility as a Navajo Code Talker,” Nygren said in a statement Sunday.

After Kinsel’s death, only two original Navajo Code Talkers are still alive: former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.

Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the Marines to serve as Code Talkers during the war, broadcasting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.

They baffled Japanese military cryptologists during World War II and participated in all the raids the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, and Iwo Jima.

The Code Talkers transmitted thousands of messages without error regarding Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics, and other communications crucial to the ultimate outcome of the war.

Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.

He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite Code Talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

President Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982, and the August 14 holiday honors all tribes involved in the war effort.

The day is a state holiday in Arizona and a holiday for the Navajo Nation on the vast reservation that covers parts of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah.