; Whereas the Choctaw Indians, largely without American citizenship status, stationed at battlefield command posts pioneered the use of Native American languages to encode United States military communications, successfully protected United States and Allied troops, supply locations, and plans from enemy intelligence, ensured the security of Allied resources and Allied lives, and contributed to the Allied victory in World War I; Whereas over one-third of able-bodied Native American men between the ages of 18 and 50 and as much as 70 percent of certain tribal populations served during World War II, representing the highest per capita contribution to the total war effort of any demographic group in the United States; Whereas United States Marine Corporal Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian born in Sacaton, Arizona, fought in the Battle of Iwo Jima and was 1 of the 6 servicemembers immortalized in an iconic photograph raising an American flag over Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945; Whereas the United States World War II mobilization efforts infringed on several Indian reservations, diminished the influence of the Bureau of Indian Affairs within Congress by moving its Washington office to Chicago, cut funding for Indian programs, and caused a shortage of nurses and doctors on reservations as medical professionals joined military operations; Whereas the United States Government’s annexation of Indian land for the establishment of Japanese internment camps on the Gila and Colorado River Indian Reservations (Mohave and Chemehuevi) in Arizona occurred without the prior consultation of the tribes impacted; Whereas over 400 Native Americans served integral roles in World War II as code talkers , employing their knowledge of Navajo and other Native American languages (which the United States Government had long attempted to suppress through the forcible assimilation of Native children in church and Government-sponsored Anglophone boarding schools since the late 1800s) to develop unbreakable codes to send messages across the Pacific