Wind Talkers: Navajo Code Talkers in WWII

At 4:15 p.m. Saipan time, on July 9th, the island was officially declared "secured." Four months later, one hundred B-29s left Saipan for their first massive air raid over Tokyo.

The Saipan casualty toll was stunning:

News that Saipan had been lost to the Allies shocked the Japanese government. The Premier, Hideki Tojo, resigned. So did his entire cabinet. (Tojo was hanged for war crimes in 1948.)

General Holland Smith declared that the victory on Saipan "opened the way to the home islands." The famous Japanese General Saito had observed (scroll down 95%) that "the fate of the Empire will be decided in this one action."

As key participants in the Allied effort, the Navajo code talkers played a fundamental role in causing another Japanese admiral to observe:

Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan.

Despite such sentiments, ferocious battles - like those at Peleliu (the horrors of which Eugene Sledge describes in his book, With the Old Breed), Iwo Jima and Okinawa - continued in the Pacific for another year.