Pfc. Preston Toledo and Pfc. Frank Toledo, Navajo cousins, transmit messages in the South Pacific 1945. Photo from the National Archives.
In some recent history research, I stumbled upon something surprising. It relates to the Navajo "code talkers," whose work gained great notoriety in the 2002 film Windtalkers starring Nicholas Cage and Adam Beach.
From that film and other information I've read, I was under the impression that all in the program were sworn to secrecy and the story not revealed until 1998. That is what is says in the film and in the National Archives' Prologue magazine (Winter 2001).
I discovered this isn't true. The "code talker" story was published more than fifty years earlier in a national best-seller.
