|
“He left his
soles overseas”
... said Lita
Kieyoomia of her late husband, Joe
Kieyoomia, at the Bataan Memorial
dedication in Albuquerque on April
7, 2002.
Initially
tortured because his captors thought
he was Japanese-American, Joe
Kieyoomia suffered months of
beatings before the Japanese
accepted his claim to Navajo
ancestry.
When the “Navajo
Code” had the Japanese baffled,
Kieyoomia was questioned and then
tortured. Kieyoomia did not know
about the code. In an interview many
years later he said, “Even if I knew
about their code, I wouldn't tell
the Japanese.”
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 bottoms of his feet to
tear.
And the beatings
continued.
“I wanted to
die. Many times, I thought I was
close.”
Kieyoomia
survived the prison camps, the Hell
Ships and the torture. After 3-1/2
years as a prisoner of war, he was
liberated and returned to the land
of his birth.
Joe Kieyoomia
died in 1997. |
