Jose “Pepe” Tomeu still remembers the life-changing gift he received Christmas 1962.
His freedom.
It was Christmas Eve when the 18-year-old finally was coming home from Cuba. He and his father had been imprisoned there for the past 20 months along with about 1,200 other men. They’d been caught while risking their lives on a mission they hoped would save their home country.
Tomeu came to the United States with his parents at 16 after their family farm was seized by the Cuban government under Fidel Castro. They were allowed to take nothing with them.
Soon after moving to Florida, he and his father signed up to fight in a mission being planned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The goal was to send exiled Cubans back to their home country to overthrow Castro and establish a new government.
The mission later became known as the Bay of Pigs, the English name for Bahia de Cochinos, where soldiers fought.
Castro had taken control of the country in 1959 after overthrowing the elected leader of the island nation, Fulgencio Batista. He instituted communism. The U.S. government saw his leadership as dangerous.
After receiving military training from the United States in Guatemala, Tomeu and the other Cuban men—known as Brigade 2506—landed in swampy areas of Cuba on April 17, 1961.
Though historians debate what caused the mission to fail, Tomeu says they simply ran out of ammunition.
“We just could not fight no more,” he said.
After three days of fighting, they were forced to surrender. That’s when he recalls a hand grasping his neck from behind. He turned and was shocked by the face staring back at him, he said.
It was Fidel Castro.
“I couldn’t believe it, because I’d seen so many pictures,” he said.
He and almost 1,200 other prisoners were kept in barracks for 20 months. One day, in late December 1962, they were let outside the barracks for the first time. And they were given clothes. That’s when they knew something was happening, he said.
The United Stated had negotiated to give $53 million in baby food and medicine to the Cuban government as ransom for them, according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The next day, the prisoners were taken to the airport where Pan American planes were waiting. Prisoners boarded alphabetically by their last names.
“My name is Tomeu,” he said. “I got the last plane.
“But it was awesome. I cannot describe it.”
They were then taken to what was then known as Homestead Air Force Base in Homestead, Florida. There, they were fed, and some were reunited with family.
It was Christmas Eve 1962.
Skinny and malnourished from his time in prison, Tomeu went to work with one goal—gaining 20 pounds to meet the minimum weight to enlist in the U.S. Army. About a month later, he went back to serve in the military for a second time.
In the past 60 years, he married his wife, Fern, and they raised a family. He started a successful pest control business in Alachua, and competed around the country in calf-roping, earning a spot in a rodeo hall of fame.
He’s also worked as a firefighter and has helped law enforcement agencies for decades as a translator. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for the United States and worries about the spread of communism, he said.
“We live in the best place on earth. Hopefully, we keep it that way.”
He wasn’t born in the United States, but he says he would die for it.
“Any day, at any time—till the day I die.”
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