Military slices out web pages about WWII Native American code talkers to comply with Trump order to eradicate DEI

In order to comply with Donald Trump’s executive orders to eradicate signs of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the military has removed at least 10 webpages dedicated to the famed Native American “Code Talker” units that used indigenous languages to transmit secret messages during WWI and WWII.

"As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department,” Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot told Axios, which first reported the changes. “We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."

"In the rare cases that content is removed that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct components accordingly."

The changes appeared scattershot, with some military pages about the those in the program leading to error messages and others maintaining content about the units, which included people from at least 15 different Native American nations and who served in key battles throughout the early 1900s.

Some such sites appeared unchanged, but included a banner mentioning they had been reviewed for compliance with the Trump administration’s executive orders against diversity, which have ordered agencies to cease spending, organizing, and publicizing any DEI-related efforts.

As one extant page notes, the military turned to members of the Navajo (Diné) because their unwritten language is one of “extreme complexity,” forming a code the Japanese never broke in WWII.

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“Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training,” according to the Navy. “It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest.”

The “unique achievements of the Navajo Code Talkers constitute a proud chapter in the history of the United States Marine Corps,” another still-existing page notes. “Their patriotism, resourcefulness, and courage have earned them the gratitude of all Americans.”

Trump himself honored the code talkers with an event at the White House during his first term, telling a group of assembled veterans, “You are really incredible people. “

“And from the heart, from the absolute heart, we appreciate what you’ve done, how you’ve done it, the bravery that you displayed, and the love that you have for your country,” he said at the time.

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Critics were outraged over the changes.

“Trump’s Pentagon is erasing Navajo Code Talkers — Indigenous warriors who helped win WWII — from military websites,” VoteVets, a veteran political advocacy group, said in a statement on X. “This isn’t about ‘efficiency.’ It’s about whitewashing history and erasing those who don’t fit his MAGA narrative.”

EJ Montini, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, writing in a state that borders large parts of the Diné reservation, argued that “every elected official in Arizona from every party should be pounding on the doors of the Defense Department to reverse the idiotic DEI overreach that is trying to erase the Code Talker legacy.”

“Who could possibly be pleased by an effort to erase the history of a group of native men who were vital to the success of every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II, particularly America's victory at Iwo Jima,” he asked.

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The erasure is another historical irony in a long string of them for America’s Indigenous soldiers.

Even though the U.S Army spent decades warring with tribes as settlers flooded across the U.S., and the federal government attempted to forcibly assimilate native peoples and destroy their languages, Native Americans came to serve in the U.S. military at well above the national average, where their language skills were suddenly in high demand.

“The irony of being asked to use their Native languages to fight on behalf of America was not lost on code talkers, many of whom had been forced to attend government or religious-run boarding schools that tried to assimilate Native peoples and would punish students for speaking in their traditional language,” the National WWII Museum notes.

The downed websites follow reports from last week that the Arlington National Cemetery, America’s most important military cemetery, had removed web information about notable Black, Hispanic, and female veterans.

Tens of thousands of posts and photographs including people of color and women have also been removed from Pentagon files. Even photos of people whose last name was Gay and the infamous Enola Gay bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in WWII (named for the pilot’s mother) were excised from the Pentagons historic records because they involved the word “gay.”