Chester Nez, the last of the 29 Navajos who developed an unbreakable code which helped the Allies defeat the Japanese in WWII, passed away on Wednesday in his home in Albuquerque, N.M. at the age of 93.

Chester Nez was in the 10^th grade when a Marine recruiter went to the Navajo reservation in 1942 looking for men fluent in Navajo and English. The young Nez chose to keep his enlistment a secret from his family and also lied to the military about his age.

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Nez joined the 382nd Platoon and was given the monumental task of helping to develop a code which would be undecipherable for the Axis forces.

According to AZCentral.com, the American military was searching for ways to transmit classified information to troops across the Pacific and all languages and dialects used up to that point had been cracked by Japanese cryptographers.

However, the Navajo "Code Talkers" used their native language as the basis of a cipher which confounded the Japanese Military throughout the remainder of WWII.

In total, 400-500 Native Americans were in the U.S. Marines and had the express job of transmitting tactical messages.

It wasn't until 1968 that the Code Talkers operation was declassified and the men involved were finally able to receive recognition for their service.

In 1982, the Code Talkers were awarded a Certificate of Recognition by President Ronald Reagan, who also named August 14^th "Navajo Code Talkers Day".

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law which honored every Native American Code Talker who served in WWII with a Congressional Gold Medal, to be retained in the Smithsonian Institution, and a duplicate silver medal for each Code Talker.

Nez wrote a memoir titled Code Talker which details his experiences as part of the unit and the 29 U.S. Marine Code Talkers were also the subjects of the 2002 film "Windtalkers" which starred Nicholas Cage.

TagsChester Nez, Navajo Code, World War II