The Navajo word for tortoise, for example, would have been used to identify the presence of an enemy tank. A single word with different voice inflections could have been used to mean several different things to a Code Talker.

It was a code unbreakable by the Japanese, although they tried.

June served uninjured in the Marines from 1942 to 1945. It was a time when in this country, Navajo Indians were sometimes punished for speaking their native language.

Virginia said her husband joined the Marines because there was nothing to do on the reservation. But he also wanted to serve his country and represent his tribe.

In the military, June and other Navajo Indians faced marked cultural differences and bigotry within their own ranks, Hudson pointed out. Even so, June's ability to speak what his wife says is now a dying language helped Marines stay a step ahead of the enemy on the battlefield in Japan.

Today, June is one of two Navajo Code Talkers still alive. The other, Samuel Tso, lives in Arizona.

"I just think it's great to teach people about what happened," Joe Galbraith said about June's appearance. "It's unfortunate there's not more Code Talkers around."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com