<P> The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater . Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I . </P> <P> Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Lakota, Meskwaki, and Comanche soldiers; they saw service in the Pacific, North African, and European theaters . </P> <P> Soldiers of Basque ancestry may have also been used for code talking by the U.S. Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating . Recent research has cast doubt on this, however . </P> <P> Members of the Assiniboine served as code talkers during World War II, utilizing the Assiniboine language to encrypt communications . The code talkers included Gilbert Horn Sr., who grew up in the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation of Montana and later became a tribal judge and politician . </P>

What role did the navajo code talkers play