Major General Clayton Vogel, Camp Elliott's commanding officer, composed an urgent letter — supported by another from Johnston — describing the demonstration to the Marine Corps commandant in Washington, D.C., and urging the immediate recruitment of two hundred young, well-educated Navajos to serve as Marine communications specialists. After an agonizing delay, General Vogel was authorized by Washington to recruit just thirty Navajos for training in a trial project. The commandant of the Marine Corps, unwilling to risk turning over such a vital element of the war effort to a civilian and two hundred Navajo Indians, reasoned that if a program using the thirty men did not work out, the Marines would not have expended too much time and effort.

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By mid-April, Marine recruiting personnel appeared on the Navajo Reservation. They proceeded to enlist thirty volunteers from agency schools at Fort Wingate and Shiprock, New Mexico, and Fort Defiance, Arizona. In addition to being fluent in both the Navajo tongue and English, each enlistee had to be physically fit in order to serve as a messenger in combat. The Navajos were told only that they would be'specialists' and would serve both in the United States and overseas. Some members of the group were underage, but as birth records were not usually kept on the reservation, it was easy for a recruit to lie or be mistaken about his age. Carl Gorman, a 36-year-old Navajo from Fort Defiance, was too old to be considered by the Marines, so he lied about his age in order to be accepted.

For almost all of the Navajos, travel was a brand new experience. Some had never been off the reservation, and many had never ridden on a bus or train. The majority of them had never seen an ocean and did not realize that they would soon be a part of the ferocious war being fought in the middle of the Pacific. Several of the recruits' families insisted that before leaving, their sons participate in a religious ceremony to pray for the young men's safe return.

The group of Navajos who reported for basic training at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot had never experienced any sort of military discipline, and several found it difficult to cope with their new lifestyle. Although now officially designated the 382nd Platoon, U.S. Marine Corps, at boot camp, the group was referred to as 'The Navajo School.'

Following their basic training, the Navajo Marines were moved to Camp Pendleton at Oceanside, California, where their new officers were quick to realize that these young men were, in some ways, different from those with whom they were used to dealing. But the Navajos learned to march in cadence, obey orders, and keep their quarters scrupulously clean. On one occasion, during a dress parade on a particularly hot day, several non-Indian Marines passed out from the heat, while all of the Navajos, who hailed from the hot climate of the Southwest, remained erect in formation and stood at attention during the personal inspection that followed.

One writer for the Marine Corps Chevron reported that 'At present they're a typical Marine outfit of budding specialists. They gripe about the things that all Marines gripe about — liberty, chow and the San Diego weather.' In short, the Navajos were rapidly shaping up into excellent Leathernecks.

At Camp Pendleton, the Navajos, in addition to their other duties, were required to devise a new Marine Corps military code which, when transmitted in their own language, would completely baffle their Japanese enemies. The code's words had to be short, easy to learn, and quick to recall. After working long and hard on the project, the men devised a two-part code. The first part, a 26-letter phonetic alphabet, used Navajo names for 18 animals or birds, plus the words ice for I, nut for N, quiver for Q, Ute for U, victor for V, cross for X, yucca for Y, and zinc for Z. The second part consisted of a 211-word English vocabulary and the Navajo equivalents. This code, when compared with conventional Marine Corps codes, offered considerable savings in time, since the latter involved lengthy encoding and deciphering procedures by Signal Corps cryptographic personnel using sophisticated electronic equipment.

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