What a Captured Navajo Sergeant Heard When Japan Made Him Listen to the Marines' Code

The code talkers' full story, including Joe Kieyoomia, is chapter 9 of our book UNSUNG. Read the first chapter free: https://readunsung.com In 1942 the Marines built a code out of Navajo words, designed so that even a native speaker couldn't follow it. Japan never captured a code talker. It did hold a Navajo sergeant from New Mexico, taken on Bataan weeks before the code existed, and it kept asking him what the words meant. This file follows two stories that meet in a prison cell in Nagasaki: Sgt. Joe Kieyoomia of the 200th Coast Artillery, captured in April 1942 and held for 43 months, and the Marines at Camp Elliott who turned an everyday language into a code its own speakers couldn't follow. It draws on the National Archives' history of the program, the Navy's 1992 fact sheet and Kieyoomia's own 1995 interview, and those sources don't fully agree about what Japan put in front of him. Sources Jevec, "Semper Fidelis, Code Talkers," Prologue, National Archives, Winter 2001 U.S. Navy fact sheet on the Navajo code talkers, 17 September 1992 Tim Korte, Associated Press interview with Joe Kieyoomia, 28 September 1995 New Mexico National Guard 200th and 515th Coast Artillery memorial record #WW2 #CodeTalkers #1941Files