WWII Navajo code talkers welcome recognition

By Tim Gaynor

WINDOW ROCK, Arizona (Reuters) - Before Keith Little went off to war, speaking Navajo had only ever got him into trouble at school.

By the time he came home in 1945, it had proved decisive in winning the brutal campaign for the Pacific and earned him a niche in history.

Navajo code talkers have already been the subject of a Hollywood film and received congressional medals for their wartime service. Now, surviving members of the crack communications team are to be featured on a postage stamp, and the Arizona state legislature plans a memorial to them outside the state capitol in Phoenix.

"Recognition has been a long time in coming, so it is welcome," said Keith Little, 83, who is president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association.

Like several of the other code talkers, celebrated in the 2002 film "Windtalkers," Little spent a childhood herding sheep on the broad juniper and sage covered steppe of the reservation.

When the United States was pitched in to the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, veterans say many Navajo on the reservation took it personally and rushed to join the armed forces.

"We wanted to get even," said Samuel Smith, 82, who went to war aged 17. "It was my intention to defend my little piece of land that I was herding sheep on."

WALKING CODE