Joe Hosteen Kellwood |

Joe Kellwood [detail from video] | World War, 1939-1945
Marine Corps
Okinawa Island (Ryukyu Island); Pacific Theater
Private First Class
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Joe Hosteen Kellwood was born in 1921 in Steamboat Canyon, Arizona, within the Navajo reservation. Kellwood was among the second group of Marines to be trained as Navajo Code Talkers, and he remembers the training as being intense and demanding. He and the 1st Marine Division attacked Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain in December 1943, where he endured the loss of two fellow Code Talkers, as well as malaria and the terror of nighttime Japanese bombing raids. After Cape Gloucester, Kellwood took part in the invasion of Peleliu in September 1944, and Okinawa from April through July 1945. After the war, he attended college using the GI Bill before embarking on a career in the construction field as a carpenter and tradesman. He later became heavily involved with the Navajo Code Talkers Association, with whom he became renowned for his rendition of the Marines Hymn in the Navajo language.
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