Navajo Code Talker Chester Nez is seen at the State Department in Washington, D.C. on June 5, 2002. 
 
 ALBUQUERQUE N.M. The last of 29 Navajo Americans who developed an unbreakable code that helped Allied forces win the second World War died in New Mexico on Wednesday of kidney failure at the age of 93. 
 
 Chester Nez was the last remaining survivor of an original group of 29 Navajos recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps to create a code based on their language that the Japanese could not crack. 
 
 His son, Michael Nez, said his father died peacefully in his sleep at their home in Albuquerque. 
 
 "He had been battling kidney disease and it seems like the disease won," Michael Nez told Reuters. "He's the last of a great era, a great part of history." 
 
 About 400 code talkers would go on to use their unique battlefield cipher to encrypt messages sent from field telephones and radios throughout the Pacific theater during the war. 
 
 It was regarded as secure from Japanese military code breakers because the language was spoken only in the U.S. Southwest, was known by fewer than 30 non-Navajo people, and had no written form. 
 
 The Navajos' skill, speed and accuracy under fire in ferocious battles from the Marshall Islands to Iwo Jima is credited with saving thousands of U.S. servicemen's lives and helping shorten the war. Their work was celebrated in the 2002 movie "Windtalkers." 
 
 The president of the Navajo Nation, Ben Shelly, said he had ordered flags to be flown at half staff in memory of Nez. "It saddens me to hear the last of the original code talkers has died," Shelly said. "We are proud of these young men in defending the country they loved using their Navajo language." Last November, the American Veterans Center honored Nez for bravery and valor above and beyond the call of duty, awarding him the Audie Murphy Award for distinguished service. 
 
 "I was very proud to say that the Japanese did everything in their power to break that code but they never did," Nez said in an interview with the Stars and Stripes newspaper the day before receiving the award. 
 
 Nez and his young fellow recruits were called communications specialists by the Marines and were taught Morse code, semaphore and "blinker," a system using lights to send messages between ships. 
 
 The code they developed substituted Navajo words for military terms. CHAY-DA-GAHI, which translates to "turtle," came to mean a tank while a GINI, "chicken hawk" in English, became a dive bomber. America was NE-HE-MAH, "our mother." 
 
 The code talkers served in all six Marine divisions and 13 were killed in World War Two. 
 
 Nez also volunteered to serve two more years during the Korean War. He retired in 1974 after a 25-year career as a painter at the Veterans Administration hospital in Albuquerque. 
 
 Shelly said the Navajo Nation was drafting a proclamation in honor of Nez that it plans to present, along with the Navajo Nation flag, to the code talker's relatives. Nez is expected to be buried at the Santa Fe National Cemetery next week. 
 
 (Additional reporting and writing by Daniel Wallis in Denver; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bill Trott and Sandra Maler) ||||| Image copyright AP Image caption Chester Nez was eager to tell his family about what he did but it was only declassified in 1968 
 
 The last of the 29 Navajo Americans who developed a code with their native language to encrypt military messages in World War 2 has died. 
 
 Chester Nez, 93, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, had told US media he was "very proud" of his part developing the cipher the Japanese never broke. 
 
 It was credited with saving the lives of thousands of US troops in the Pacific. 
 
 Nez, who was also a painter, died of kidney failure on Wednesday. 
 
 "It saddens me to hear the last of the original code talkers has died," Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly told Reuters, adding he was ordering flags to be flown at half-mast in Nez's honour. 
 
 "We are proud of these young men in defending the country they loved using their Navajo language." 
 
 The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did Chester Nez 
 
 Nez was chosen from among 250 Navajos who arrived at the Army base in Arizona for the project. He was in high school at the time of his enlistment and lied about his age. 
 
 The code took words from the Navajo language, which was spoken by less than 30 non-Navajos at the time, and matched them to military terms. The Navajo word for turtle became "tank", chicken hawk became "dive bomber" and "our mother" meant America. 
 
 About 400 code talkers used the cipher to relay messages sent from field telephones and radios throughout the Pacific. Messages read aloud by the code talkers were immediately destroyed. 
 
 "It's one of the greatest parts of history that we used our own native language during World War II," Nez said in 2010. "The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did." 
 
 Image copyright AP Image caption Chester Nez is standing front left with other code talkers in 1942 
 
 The Code Talker mission was only declassified in 1968. But the original group received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2001, and the programme was dramatised in the 2002 movie Windtalkers. 
 
 After World War 2, Nez volunteered in the Korean War, and retired in 1974 after a 25-year career as a painter at the Veterans Administration hospital in Albuquerque. 
 
 Despite difficulties travelling since both of his legs were partially amputated, he loved to tell his story, said Judy Avila, who worked with Nez on his memoir. 
 
 "He always wanted to go, he loved meeting people," she said. "And with something like kidney failure, it comes really gradually. At the end, he was really tired."
– For the last of the group of Navajo men who created a code that confounded the Japanese in World War II, "baa hane' yée éí t'áá kódiíji' bíighah silíí"—"his life story ends here"—fellow Navajo veterans say. Chester Nez, 93, who has died of kidney failure at his home in Albuquerque, was one of 29 men recruited for the Marine Corps' all-Navajo 382nd Platoon in 1942, the Arizona Republic reports. The "Code Talkers" used their native language, only spoken by a handful of non-Navajo at the time, to create a code the Japanese found impossible to crack. There were around 400 Code Talkers by the end of the war. Their mission remained classified until 1968, but survivors received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2001 and their work was dramatized in the 2002 movie Windtalkers. The code the men created matched Navajo words to military words, using turtle for "tank" and chicken hawk for "dive bomber," the BBC explains. Nez, who grew up in a family of shepherds in New Mexico, was still a teenager when he signed up and was sent to Guadalcanal. "When bombs dropped, generally we Code Talkers couldn't just curl up in a shelter," he recalled in his memoir, Code Talker. "We were almost always needed to transmit information, to ask for supplies and ammunition, and to communicate strategies. And after each transmission, to avoid Japanese fire, we had to move." The president of the Navajo nation has ordered flags to be flown at half-mast. "It saddens me to hear the last of the original Code Talkers has died," he tells Reuters. "We are proud of these young men in defending the country they loved using their Navajo language."