Joe Kieyoomia

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Joe Kieyoomia (1925 - 1997) was a Navajo soldier in New Mexico's 200th Coast Artillery unit and was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of the Philippines in 1942.

His story is unique in that the U.S. Marine Corps trained Navajo men to learn a top secret communications code in their own Navajo language. As an enlisted member of the U.S. Army, however, he was not exposed to this communications code since it was explicitly USMC training, saving it from being deciphered by Japanese Military intelligence.

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[edit] The capture of the Philippine Islands

The surrender of Bataan would hasten the fall of Corregidor, a month later. However, without this stand, the Japanese might have quickly overrun all of the U.S. bases in the Pacific. Bataan forced them to slow down, giving the allies valuable time to prepare for conflicts such as the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway which followed closely thereafter. Ultimately, more than 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 American prisoners of war were forced into the infamous Bataan Death March.

[edit] Captured

Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives)
Prisoners on the march from Bataan to the prison camp, May 1942. (National Archives)

Initially tortured because his captors thought he was Japanese-American (and therefore a traitor), Joe Kieyoomia suffered months of beatings before the Japanese accepted his claim to Navajo ancestry.

He survived the Death March that killed thousands of starved U.S. soldiers. When the "Navajo Code" had the Japanese baffled, Kieyoomia was questioned and then tortured, although he could only understand bits and pieces of what trained Navajo Code Talkers were saying, the code was so sophisticated that he eventually told the Japanese that it sounded like nonsense to him.

Kieyoomia was not trained as a code talker and did not know about the code. Stripped naked and made to stand for hours in deep snow until he talked, Joe Kieyoomia's feet froze to the ground. Finally allowed to return to his cell, a guard shoved him, causing the soles of his feet to tear.

[edit] Navajo Prisoner of War

Kieyoomia survived the prison camps, the "hell ships" and the torture. He survived the second atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on Nagasaki at war's end, saying he was protected by the concrete walls of his cell. After 3½ years as a prisoner of war, he was abandoned for three days after the bombing, but says a Japanese officer finally freed him. He returned to the United States.

[edit] Looking Back

Years later, Kieyoomia says, he learned of the Code Talkers and their accomplishments.

"I salute the Code Talkers," he says as he displays his 12 service medals, framing a handsome portrait of his Army youth. "And even if I knew about their code, I wouldn't tell the Japanese."

Joe Kieyoomia passed away in 1997, and as with many veterans of the Navajo Nation, his service to the United States was looked highly upon.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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