Morton’s Zach Taylor, 17, has been in the Midwest Central Young Marines for a while, but nothing could prepare him for going out West three months ago to meet the few surviving Navajo code talkers.

“It was very inspiring to learn about their culture and the history of how they communicated,” said Taylor, a staff sergeant within the group. “They were needed during the war, and no one else knew their language but them.”

During World War II, the U.S. Marine Corps used fluent-speaking Navajos to create and then use an unbreakable code that was used on the front lines in the war against Japan. Many credit the 420 or so men who served as code talkers for helping America win the war, because prior to using the Navajos, Japanese intelligence experts had broken many of the military’s codes.

For years, it was a military secret, but recently the Pentagon lifted the veil, leading to movies about their exploits as well as a Code Talkers Day, which is held every Aug. 14 in Window Rock, Ariz., the capital of the Navajo nation.

Seven area Young Marines and two adults joined about 200 children and adults in mid-August to participate in the annual Navajo Code Talkers Day. While there, the children act as escorts for veterans, and they also help with other community service projects. Taylor said he’s appreciative of the chances afforded by the program.

“The Young Marines gives you the opportunity to experience things/meet people that normally you wouldn’t be able to do or see. How many people can say that they talked to a Navajo code talker?” he said. “Not many, and I’m very grateful that I got the chance to meet some.

“While talking to the code talkers (and hearing their stories) it opened my eyes to what they actually went through and how hard it was to have their own language.”

Lucas Ward, 17, of Farmington, the organization’s national Young Marine of the Year, had met a few of the code talkers on previous trips. That just reinforced how utterly important their jobs were at the time.

“These fine men are literally living pieces of American history. They are heroes in the highest sense. And yet, you would never know it if you just met them on the street,” he said. “The Navajo people as a whole, and the code talkers in specific, are incredibly humble people. Even when questioned, it is clear that some of the men don’t like to talk much about their own actions or the things they personally experienced.”

John Lewis, the local unit’s commanding officer and a former Marine, said the experience was surreal, in that people got to interact with the veterans, talk to them and then see the Navajo nation.

“Any time you walk into a place of significant history, you have a weird feeling that you are walking in time,” he said. “To have them there, on the actual (code talkers) day and to have some of the Native Americans do their dances and being able to talk to them, it was like going back in time.”

Ward agreed, saying he thought the younger members of his group gained a lot.

“I have a bit of a unique perspective on them and what they went through due to my previous trips, but I think this trip definitely helped a lot of other Young Marines who haven’t had those sorts of experiences to see what these brave Marines really had to go through as they developed their code, learned and taught it, and used it in combat throughout the Pacific,” he said.

The Young Marines organization, around since 1959, has more than 300 units with 11,000 children and 3,000 adult volunteers in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Germany, Japan and other countries, according to the organization’s website. Perhaps the best way to think about the Young Marines is to imagine the group as a cross between the Boy Scouts and a JROTC unit, with a bit of the anti-drug message from the DARE program tossed in. Children can join as young as 8 and participate through high school.