- Joe Kieyoomia
Joe Kieyoomia (1925 - 1997) was a Navajo soldier in
New Mexico 's 200th Coast Artillery unit and was captured by theImperial 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.
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 .Captured
Initially
torture d because his captors thought he wasJapanese-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.
Navajo Prisoner of War
Kieyoomia survived the
prison camp s, the "hell ship s" 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 aprisoner 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.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 died in 1997, and as with many veterans of the
Navajo Nation , his service to the United States was looked highly upon.ee also
*
Bataan Death March
*Military history of the Philippines during World War II
*United States Army
*200th Coast Artillery (United States)
*Navajo Nation
*Navajo language
*Navajo people
*Southern Athabaskan languages
*United States Marine Corps External links
* [http://www.angelfire.com/nm/bcmfofnm/names/k.html “He left his soles overseas”]
* [http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/articles/navcode.htm How Effective Was Navajo Code?]
* [http://www.samuelholiday.com/site/code-talker-history/joe-kieyoomia/ Joe Kieyoomia-Samuel Tom Holiday Web Site ]
* [http://www.savannah.chatham.k12.ga.us/Students/Native+American+Heritage+Month/November+5th+-+Code+Talkers.htm The Code Talkers]
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