Warriors: Navajo Code Talkers

"When I was going to boarding school, the U.S. government told us not to speak Navajo," recalls Teddy Draper Sr. of Chinle, Arizona, "but during the war, they wanted us to speak it!" Speaking their native language--which the Japanese could not decode--Navajo soldiers were instrumental in U.S. marine victories in the Pacific during World War II, relaying vital information between the front lines and headquarters. Kenji Kawano, a native Japanese photographer whose black and white images of surviving "code talkers" are unusual for their sensitivity, notes with some irony that these soldiers were his father's enemies at one time.