Here's the story of the Native American code talkers who Trump made his 'Pocahontas' comments to by Michal Kranz on Nov 28, 2017, 6:14 PM Advertisement
 When President Donald Trump held an event honoring Navajo code talkers who served in World War II, he took the opportunity to poke fun at Sen. Elizabeth Warren's reported Native heritage by referring to her as "Pocahontas," drawing attention away from the incredible exploits of the code talkers themselves. Trump's Monday comments were immediately denounced as "careless" by Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty, who also stated that the three men were "not pawns to advance a personal grudge." Sen. John McCain also stood up for the code talkers in a tweet he posted on Tuesday. "Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to the Navajo Code Talkers, whose bravery, skill & tenacity helped secure our decisive victory over tyranny & oppression during WWII," McCain wrote. "Politicizing these genuine American heroes is an insult to their sacrifice." Here are the stories of the three men Trump met with, who together with many other Navajo code talkers, helped the United States win World War II: SEE ALSO: The dark history of Pocahontas, whose name Trump keeps evoking in order to slam Elizabeth Warren The Navajo are a Native American ethnic group living in the American Southwest, and their main reservation, which occupies the Four Corners area of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico, is the largest reservation in the United States today.  The Navajo are the largest Native American ethnic group in the United States today. Although their language was the one used to create code in World War II, people from other Native American groups like the Hopi and the Comanche were recruited as code talkers as well. Sources: NavajoPeople.org, Indian Country Today
At the beginning of US involvement in WWII, the Japanese were breaking every code the Americans came up with. In response, World War I veteran Philip Johnston suggested a novel idea to the US Marine Corpse in 1942 — using the Navajo language as a code.  Johnston was the son of missionaries, and had grown up speaking Navajo on the Navajo reservation even though he himself was not Native. He was inspired to use the Navajo language as a code after seeing Native Americans communicating with each other in the US Army during the First World War. Sources: Newsweek, National Museum of the American Indian
The Navajo language was the perfect language to use because it had no alphabet, and as a result, there were no materials the Japanese could use to learn it. The Marine Corps loved Johnston's idea, and began recruiting young Navajo men as code talkers.  One of the code talkers at Trump's event on Monday, Peter MacDonald, said the new recruits were initially not told they were going to be used to speak in code. "They were just asked, 'Do you want to join the Marines? You want to fight the enemy? Come join the Marines.' So they volunteered," MacDonald said. Some, though, were drafted. "We were drafted. They made us go. I didn't volunteer," Franklin Shupla, a code talker from the Hopi tribe, said. Sources: Newsweek, National Museum of the American Indian
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