An obit in The Week last June reported on the death of a "talker", Chester Nez, who along with 28 other male members of the Nahajo tribe created a code that the Japanese never broke. As a matter of fact, other Navajos could not read it either. The irony of his story is that as a child on the reservation in New Mexico he was punished with a mouth-washing of soap, for speaking his native language (at about the same time in Ireland, the British punished native Irish for speaking their language as well). In 1942 the military came to him and wanted him to create the code using that same language he once got punished for speaking. They used Navajo words and labeled a tank a "tortoise" and a grenade a "potatoes". At one point during his service in the Pacific an officer mistook him for a Japanese and almost shot him. When he returned to New Mexico after the war we could not vote till 1948, or discuss the code until it was de-classified in 1968 and got official recognition in 2001 with a Congressional Gold Medal. (I wonder how many of the talkers were still alive). Nez said he was always bothered by the irony of being punished for speaking his language and then asked to use it by those who punished him.
(Source: The Week, June 20, 2014, "The Navajo warrior who baffled the Japanese")
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