John Kinsel Sr, one of the last remaining Navajo code talkers who transmitted messages during the Second World War based on the tribe’s native American language, has died at the age of 107.
Navajo Nation officials in Window Rock, Arizona, announced his death on Saturday.
Tribal president Buu Nygren has ordered all flags on the reservation to be flown at half-mast until October 27 at sunset in his honour.
“Mr Kinsel was a Marine who bravely and selflessly fought for all of us in the most terrifying circumstances with the greatest responsibility as a Navajo code talker,” Mr Nygren said on Sunday.
With Mr Kinsel’s death, only two original Navajo code talkers are still alive, former Navajo chairman Peter MacDonald and Thomas H. Begay.
Hundreds of Navajos were recruited by the US Marines to serve as code talkers during the war, transmitting messages based on their then-unwritten native language.
They confounded Japanese military cryptologists and took part in all assaults the Marines led in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945, including at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu and Iwo Jima.
The code talkers sent thousands of messages without error on Japanese troop movements, battlefield tactics and other communications crucial to the war’s ultimate outcome.
Mr Kinsel was born in Cove, Arizona, and lived in the Navajo community of Lukachukai.
He enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and became an elite code talker, serving with the 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Marine Division during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
The US president Ronald Reagan established Navajo Code Talkers Day in 1982 and the August 14 holiday honours all the tribes associated with the war effort.
The day is an Arizona state holiday and Navajo Nation holiday on the vast reservation that occupies portions of north-eastern Arizona, north-western New Mexico and south-eastern Utah.