[ISN] Keith Little, 87, president of Navajo Code Talkers group

http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/9838453-418/keith-little-87-president-of-navajo-code-talkers-group.html

By FELICIA FONSECA
Chicago Sun-Times
January 5, 2012

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Keith Little envisioned a place that would house the 
stories of the Navajo Code Talkers and where people could learn more 
about the famed World War II group who used their native language as a 
weapon.

His family now hopes to carry out his dream of a museum [1] near the 
Arizona-New Mexico border that also will hold wartime memorabilia and 
serve as haven for veterans. Little, one of the most recognizable of the 
remaining Code Talkers, died of melanoma Tuesday night at a Fort 
Defiance hospital, said his wife, Nellie. He was 87.

Little was 17 when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming one of 
hundreds of Navajos trained as Code Talkers. They used a code developed 
by 29 tribal members that was based on the then-unwritten Navajo 
language. Their code helped confound the Japanese and win the war.

“My motivation was to fight the enemy with a gun or whatever,” Little 
told The Associated Press in a July 2009 interview. “When I went into 
the Marine Corps ... I knew nothing about the Navajo code. It was really 
astonishing to me to get to Camp Pendleton and there were a bunch of 
Navajos there, and they were working with a Navajo code.”

[1] http://www.navajocodetalkers.org/

[...]


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