Navajo Code Talkers

Governor, lawmakers pledge over $1.2 million for Code Talker museum
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State Sen. John Pinto, a 94-year-old Democrat from Gallup, has long wanted to build a Navajo Code Talkers Museum and Visitors Center in New Mexico to honor the service of about 400 Navajo servicemen who used their language skills to pave the way for the invasion of the Japanese islands in World War II. On Friday, his dream finally came closer to reality when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham pledged $500,000 for the museum and senators from both political parties anted up another $526,000 out of their allotted capital outlay for construction and infrastructure projects. “If we don’t tell this story, it will be lost, and this is a story that we cannot lose,” Lujan Grisham said during a news conference to announce the deal. Pinto expressed elation and shook the governor’s hand before teaching her some Navajo words to use when she is eating chicken. Navajo Code Talker and former Navajo Nation Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald, who joined Pinto and Lujan Grisham at the event, said the greatest contribution the Code Talkers made was to “save hundreds, thousands of lives in the war in the Pacific.”