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Oakes passed away in Snye, Que. on Tuesday of natural causes. He was 94 years old.

He never really talked about it

Though Oakes was born in Canada, the Akwesasne reserve stretches across parts of Quebec, Ontario and New York, and he was living in Buffalo when he registered to fight for the U.S. army. In an interview with the U.S. Veterans History Project, he said one of his brothers was beaten up and jailed by the RCMP because he hadn’t reported for service in Canada. To avoid a similar fate, Oakes said, he took off across the border.

He said he was initially sent to the army’s induction centre at Fort Niagara, and was then sent to Louisiana to train as a code talker when officers discovered he was Mohawk.

Oakes was one of just 17 Akwesasne Mohawks recognized by the U.S. Congress as code talkers. He was sent to New Guinea and then on to the Philippines, where he transmitted coded messages translated from English to other Mohawk speakers. He often had bodyguards with him, as his language made him a valuable target.

He was in Tokyo for four months after the war ended in 1945, and was honourably discharged the following year.

Oakes went back to Buffalo and worked as a steelworker for the next 30 years, before retiring in Akwesasne. He married at 25 and had 10 children. But for most of his life, he never spoke about his work as a code talker, having sworn an oath of secrecy after he signed up.