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From YouTube: Author Liza Mundy on Code Girls
Description
Liza Mundy speaks about her new book, Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II. Recorded at the Arlington Central Library in October 2017.
A
A
My
name
is
Michelle
Fernandez
and
I'm,
a
programs
and
partnerships
librarian
here
at
Arlington,
Public
Library
and
in
case
you
can't
tell
I'm
new.
We
would
like
to
thank
our
partners
from
one
more
page
books
for
being
here
tonight
and
supplying
copies
of
the
book
for
sale.
At
this
time.
I
would
like
to
ask
that
you
silence
your
cellphone's.
As
we
begin.
A
Liza
Mundy
is
a
journalist
and
author
of
four
books.
She
is
a
former
staff
writer
for
The
Washington
Post,
where
she
specialized
in
long-form
narrative,
writing
and
her
work
won
a
number
of
awards.
Her
2012
book,
the
richer
sex,
was
named
one
of
the
top
nonfiction
books
of
2012
by
the
Washington
Post
and
a
noteworthy
book
by
the
New
York
Times
Book
Review,
her
2008
book
Michelle,
a
biography
of
First
Lady
Michelle
Obama
was
a
New
York
Times
bestseller
and
has
been
translated
into
16
languages.
A
For
you
to
try
your
hand
at
some
crypt
analysis,
they
have
beginner
and
then
advanced.
So
you
can
sort
of
make
your
way
through
the
center
for
local
history
is
going
to
be
launching
a
new
digital
collection
on
Arlington
women.
This
coming
March
and
a
sneak
peek
was
posted
this
week
on
the
library
blog
can
find
out
more
about
them
by
visiting
the
center
for
local
history.
A
B
Thank
you
so
much
and
in
fact
there
was
a
chapter
in
my
book
on
World
War
one
and
there
were
a
number
of
female
pioneers
who
came
out
of
World
War
one.
So
that
was
an
important
that
was
important,
actually
origin
point
for
our
code
breaking
abilities
such
as
they
were
it's
a
particular
pleasure
to
be
speaking
to
an
Arlington
audience.
B
I
am
a
longtime
Arlington
Ian's
a
longtime
enough
to
have
raised
my
children
and
schooled
them
in
Arlington,
and
so
I
am
a
grateful
patron
of
the
Arlington
Public
Library,
both
as
a
reader
myself
and
I,
certainly
brought
my
children
to
the
children's
section
and
I
think
we've
tried
to
exhaust
it,
although
that
would
be
hard
to
do,
and
also
when
I
was
doing
the
research
on
this
book.
You
know
much
of
which
takes
place
in
erling
Tanana.
B
You
know
really
deepened.
My
understanding
of
our
landscape
I
did
research
at
the
local
History
Center
here
at
the
library
and
just
want
to
thank
John
Stanton
and
the
other
archivists
for
being
so
helpful
and
providing
me
with
resources
that
I
really
didn't
think
I
was
going
to
be
able
to
find
my
central
character
in
the
book
and
I'm
going
to
her
book
party
tomorrow,
she's,
97
and
she's
very
excited.
B
She
was
a
schoolteacher
in
Chatham
and
came
on
the
train,
not
knowing
what
she
would
be
doing
to
work
to
take
a
government
job
in
Washington
in
1943,
and
she
lived
her
fault
while
the
place
called
Arlington
farms.
But
then
that
was
very
crowded
and
they
moved
to
an
apartment
in
in
Fillmore,
Gardens
and
I
wanted
to
she
remembered
moving
into
Fillmore
gardens.
It
was
new.
B
She
remembered
that
there
was
just
kind
of
a
lone
bill
that
was
her
memory
but,
of
course,
in
doing
work
where
I'm
mining,
the
memories
of
people
in
their
90's
about
something
that
had
happened
70
years
ago.
We
know
when
I
can
barely
remember
something
that
happened
three
days
ago.
I
I
wanted
to
know
more
about
the
apartments
in
in
Arlington
and
when
they
were
built
and
and
I
I
didn't
think
that
they
would
have
a
resource
like
that
here,
but
lo
and
behold,
John
Stanton.
When
I
got
there
it
set
out.
B
So
it
was
extraordinary
to
me
the
kind
of
rich
resources
that
that
the
library
has
and
that
they
were
able
to
confirm
these.
You
know
sort
of
fragmentary,
sometimes,
memories,
and
similarly
there
were
several
times
when
I
needed
rare,
pretty
rare
were
war
documents,
kind
of
temporary
reports
on
the
sorts
of
meetings
that
were
being
held
to
try
to
find
labor
during
the
war
and
the
the
interlibrary
loan
section.
Several
times
came
through
with
documents
that
again
I
wasn't
sure.
B
B
B
So
many
male
colleges
were
closed
to
women
still
in
the
1940s,
and
it
was
a
fine
Institute
fusion,
with
a
combination
of
young
women
who
had
come
from
elsewhere
to
get
an
education
and
also
urban
urban
young
women
from
Baltimore
hue,
many
of
whom
were
on
scholarship,
who
were
attending
college
at
a
time
when
only
4%
of
American
women
completed
a
four-year
degree.
In
part.
B
Those
numbers
were
small
because
there
were
so
few
jobs
available
to
college-educated
women,
particularly
women
with
the
liberal
arts,
education
with
a
great
liberal
arts,
education
and
and
so
pretty
much
all
they
could
hope
for
when
they
graduated
was
being
schoolteachers.
So
many
families
didn't
consider
it
worthwhile
to
educate
a
girl,
because
there
were
so
few
jobs
that
she
could
expect.
You
know:
law,
medicine,
architecture,
engineering,
most
of
those
graduate
schools
were
closed
to
women
or
at
best
admitted
you
know
one
or
two
a
year,
so
Goucher
very
fine
school.
B
B
They
were
called
Goucher,
girls
and,
and
they
were
I,
mean
I've
interviewed
for
love
them
and
they,
you
know,
spent
a
lot
of
their
time
in
Annapolis
and
in
boarding
houses
there
for
dances,
and
things
like
that.
So,
of
course,
this
is
May
of
1942
and
the
young
women
are
being.
You
know,
assured
in
their
sort
of
virginal
dresses,
presumably
into
their
their
their
post-collegiate
life
of
marriage,
and
that's
what
you
would
expect,
but
of
course,
May
1942
we've
been
in
World
War
Two.
B
Now,
for
six
months
most
of
these
young
women
have
brothers
and
boyfriends
and
fiancees,
who
are
now
shipped
out
to
the
Pacific
or
shipped
out
to
the
Atlantic.
And
meanwhile,
what
No
he
knows
about
this
group
of
young
women
is
that
Jackie
Jenkins,
who
would
eventually
be
Jackie
Jenkins.
My
mother,
a
Bill
Nye,
the
Science
Guy,
and
you
can
see
where
he
got
his
chops
and
Gwyneth.
The
minder
and
at
least
ten
of
their
classrooms
were
already
secretly.
B
Training
had
already
been
secretly
tapped
by
the
US
Navy
to
train
in
something
they
had
never
heard
of
called
crypt
analysis,
so
they
had
already
been
identified
either
by
Dean
Stimson,
who
happened
to
be
the
cousin
of
Secretary
of
War
Henry,
Stimson
I
had
and
who
had
put
in
a
quiet
word
with
his
cousin
for
her
best
senior
girls.
So
these
young
women
had
already
been
tapped
and
were
training
in
a
lot
classroom
where
they
were
being
trained,
Biola,
Winslow
and
a
naval
officer
in
a
tradition
of
code
breaking
that
went
back
to
the
Renaissance.
B
There
was
pulling
strips
of
paper
through
cardboard
learning
techniques
that
have
been
honed
in
Europe
over
hundreds
of
years
and
the
reason
that
they
were
doing
this
secretly
without
telling
anybody
was,
of
course,
because
of
Pearl
Harbor
on
December
7th
1941.
You
know
one
of
the
one
of
the
greatest
intelligence
failures
of
our
nation's
history,
one
of
the
the
surprise
attack
where
Japanese
bombers
and
fighter
planes
attacked
really
just
about
our
entire
Pacific
Fleet
in
Pearl
Harbor.
B
This,
of
course
was
an
event
that
the
Japanese
thought
was
going
to
bring
America's
to
its
knees
and
demoralize
us
and
to
the
contrary.
The
very
next
day
young
men
started
heading
for
the
recruiting
stations
and
shipping
out
very
quickly
to
the
Pacific
to
the
Atlantic
to
Europe.
We
were
in
the
war.
We
had
known
that
it
was
coming
since
the
fall
of
France,
but
all
of
a
sudden
it
was
here
total
war
taking
place
in
two
oceans
on
different
continents
and
all
the
young
men
were
word
to
take
part
in
that
war.
B
So
that's
what
what's
happening
in
the
country
within
the
US
Navy.
Of
course,
chaos
and
recrimination
prevailed
because
the
attack
had
come
a
surprise,
although,
although
we
knew
something
was
going
to
happen
at
Pearl,
Harbor
I
mean
we
knew
something
was
going
to
happen
in
the
Pacific.
We
knew
we
had
our
fleet
in
Pearl
Harbor,
but
somehow
we
didn't
see
the
attack
coming.
So
there's
a
lot
of
there's
a
lot
of
finger-pointing.
B
Careers
are
going
to
be
ruined,
but
there
is
a
recognition
in
the
Navy
that
we
need
to
ramp
up
our
intelligence-gathering
instantly
and-
and
we
need
it's
hard
for
us
to
believe,
because
we
live
in
Washington
now
with
the
proliferation
of
so
many
intelligence
agencies
in
this
area.
Of
course,
now
we
have
the
CIA
and
the
NSA
and
the
DIA
and
whatnot
military
intelligence
agencies,
but
we
didn't
have
any
of
that
in
World,
War
two
and
and
we
had
a
very
small
intelligence
apparatus.
B
It
obviously
failed
at
Pearl
Harbor
it
was
going
to
take
the
OSS
was
starting
to
ramp
up,
but
it
was
going
to
take
a
while
to
get
any
kind
of
spy
network
built
in
these
countries
that
we
were
suddenly.
You
know
at
war
with,
but
communications
intelligence,
the
interception
and
decryption
of
messages
of
radio
and
telegraph
messages
that
were
racing
all
over
the
world.
I
mean
this
was
a.
This
was
a
far-flung
global
war
in
which
commanders
and
politicians
and
diplomats
needed
to
be
able
to
communicate
over
public
airwaves
for
thousands
of
miles.
B
So
we
could
snatch
those
out
of
the
air
and
decrypt
the
encrypted
messages.
Then
we
could
have
immediate
access
to
battle
plan
strategies,
diplomatic
musings,
and
so
that's
what
we
set
out
to
do.
But
of
course
the
men
were
gone,
the
men
who
could
do
that
now
we're
out
to
sea
and
fighting
so
the
Navy
got
the
bright
idea
to
look
for
women's
colleges.
So
there's
a
there's,
a
document
in
the
National
Archives
that
I
found
where
actually
this
document
is
from
October
of
1941,
where
somebody
literally
has
the
bright
idea.
B
Okay,
the
men
are
gone.
Who
could
do
this?
So,
let's,
let's
try
for
the
women
so
so
and
let's
do
it
fast.
So
that
was
from
that.
Actually,
that
memo
was
from
September,
so
you
can
see
in
October
an
issue
contacts
with
certain
women's
colleges
regarding
triptans
electronic
of
seniors.
So
that's
what
what's
going
on
at
Goucher-
and
this
was
actually
a
little
bit
before
Pearl
Harbor,
so
you
can
see
that
the
Navy
already
knew
that
it
was
going
to
have
some
catching
up
to
do
and
alone
with
Goucher.
They
contacted
the
seven
sister
schools.
B
So
so
a
number
of
the
women
I
interviewed
for
this
book
at
Smith,
Wellesley,
Radcliffe,
Bryn,
Mawr,
Mount,
Holyoke
Barnard
Vassar
got
secret
invitations
in
the
fall
of
their
senior
year,
in
which
they
were
summoned
into
meetings,
often
with
math
professors
or
astronomy
professors,
and
they
were
asked
two
questions:
do
you
like
crossword
puzzles
and
are
you
engaged
to
be
married
and
because
it
was
plausible
that
they
would
be-
and
in
fact
there
was
a
lot
of
hasty
marriage
and
hasty
engagements
taking
place
as
the
men
shipped
out?
B
So
the
correct
answer
to
the
first
one
was
yes,
the
correct
answer
to
the
second
one
was
no
and
in
fact
a
number
of
the
women
lied
because
whatever
they
were
being
invited
to
do
it
sounded
really
interesting
and
and
so,
and
so
not
only
at
Goucher.
But
at
all
of
these
women's
colleges,
these
courses
were
secretly
taught
in
1941
1942
so
that
the
women
could
even
just
get
a
bit
of
background
in
in
this.
This
thing
that
they
had
never
heard
of
called
crypt
analysis.
So
that's
what
the
Navy
is
doing
in
1941.
B
Meanwhile,
the
army,
the
US
army,
not
to
be
left
out,
also
has
enormous
code-breaking
responsibilities
at
this
point.
We're
negotiating
with
England
over
who's,
going
to
have
responsibility
where
England
at
this
point
takes
the
lead
responsibility
for
code
breaking
in
the
Atlantic.
Although
we
are
also
very
much
involved
in
that.
Oh
we
don't.
We
don't
trust
each
other
at
first,
but
but
our
convoys
are
taking
men
and
materiel
to
England
we're
we're
at
the
mercy
of
the
u-boats,
and
so
we
care
very
much
about
the
Atlantic.
B
But
the
Inglot
England
is
the
senior
partner,
but
we
have
lead
code
breaking
responsibility
for
the
Pacific
Ocean,
not
only
the
Navy
but
the
Japanese
army,
which,
in
the
aftermath
of
Pearl
Harbor
of
course,
Japan
has
taken.
Guam
Japan
has
taken.
The
Philippines
Japan
has
captured
an
enormous
amount
of
territory,
that's
now
being
held
by
the
Japanese
army
and
that's
our
Army's,
so
the
US
Army
decides
okay.
B
If
she
goes
to
college,
she
could
expect
a
slightly
better
job
teaching
school,
so
in
1942
dot
took
her
first
teaching
job
at
Chatham,
high
school,
all
of
the
men
teachers.
All
of
the
male
teachers
had
left
a
lot
of
the
female
teachers
had
left
to
marry
the
men,
so
she
was
teaching
English,
French
physics,
Latin
hygiene.
She
was
marching
the
girls
back
and
forth
to
lunch.
She
was
completely
exhausted
and
at
the
end
of
that
year
she
said
she
came
home
to
Lynchburg
Ridge
she's,
a
mom
they
dumped
everything
on
me.
B
I
am
NOT
going
back
to
that
school
and
her
mother
said
well.
I've
heard
that
there's
a
recruiter
at
the
Virginian
hotel
in
Lynchburg
I,
don't
know
what
he's
recruiting
for
and
dot
went
and
she
just
signed
on
the
dotted
line,
because,
whatever
it
was,
it
was
going
to
be
easier
than
teaching
school
and
it
was
going
to
pay
more.
B
She
finds
herself,
like
many
women,
well,
actually
she's,
not
yet
at
Arlington
farms,
but
she
goes.
She
takes
a
cab
and
you'll
see
you'll
see
this
in
the
book.
I
don't
wanna
get
too
much
of
it
away,
but
she
takes
a
cab
in
too
early
in
Virginia.
She
has
no
idea
where
she's
going.
She
doesn't
have
very
much
money
with
her.
B
Anybody
I'm
right
who
works
for
the
government
and
she
and
she
had
also
had
to
pay
her
train
fare
to
come
to
Washington,
so
they
put
so
they
sent
her
to
this
place
called
Arlington
farms
that
is
over
somewhere
near
Fort.
Myers
I
mean
I,
looked
at
the
map
to
try
to
figure
out
where
Arlington
farms
where
it
was
because
it's
it's
it's
not
there
anymore,
but
it
was
hasty.
B
The
young
women
who
came
up
7,000
young
women
living
in
Arlington
farms.
There
was
a
lot
of
coming
and
going
with
soldiers.
So
there
were
some
handsome
young
officers,
in
fact,
and
and
the
the
head
of
it
was
criticized
actually
by
the
amount
of
fraternizing
that
he
allowed
in
Arlington
farms
and
he
replied.
Memorably
I
am
NOT
running
an
old
maids
home.
B
So
anyway,
that's
where
she
found
herself-
and
this
is
actually
a
photograph
taken
by
a
photographer
named
Esther
boob
Lee
who-
and
these
are
all
available
at
the
Library
of
Congress
they're,
hundreds
of
them
documenting
life
at
Arlington
farms,
they're
wonderful
to
look
at
you
can
find
them
online.
If
you
just
google,
her
Esther
Buble,
so
you
know
this
could
have
been
dot.
That's
exactly
the
way
she
remembers
looking,
but
that's
not
her
that
we
know
of.
We
actually
don't
know
who
it
is.
B
So
this
is
where
she
finds
herself
working
Arlington
Hall
in
Arlington,
Virginia,
former
girls
school.
That's
been
requisitioned
by
the
army.
Still
there.
If
you're
driving
along
route
50,
you
can
glimpse
it
through
the
trees
and
that's
the
way
in
which
reporting
this
book
has
really
changed.
My
understanding
of
our
landscape,
not
only
all
these
garden
apartments
that
were
built
but
Arlington
Hall
had
been.
B
You
know
a
very
posh
girls
school,
the
girls
took
classes
in
deportment
and
posture
and
horseback
riding
and
and
the
army
had
kicked
him
out,
taken
it
over
and
built
temporary
housing.
So
this
is
actually
not
housing.
Temporary
work
space
on
the
grounds
where
there
used
to
be
bridle
paths
and
tea
houses
and
ponds,
and
that's
where
dot
would
find
herself
working
the
next
day
after
she
takes
the
bus
back
from
her
new
dorm
room
at
Arlington
farms.
B
B
They
had
to
be
supplied
regularly
and
we
were
intercepting
these
messages
every
day,
all
day,
hundreds
of
messages
a
day
they
were
code
groups,
they
were
four-digit
code
groups.
So
a
word
Maru,
which
is
fourth,
is
the
word
for
their
supply.
Ship
might
be
rendered
as
six
to
eight
one
and
then
they
would
in
cipher
it
by
adding
another
number
to
it,
so
that
it
would
travel
through
the
air,
not
as
the
code
group
that
is
an
in
Seifert
code
group.
B
So
these
schoolteachers
had
to
learn
within
a
matter
of
days
how
to
strip
out
that
encryption.
How
to
look
at
a
message?
Do
the
math
learn
where
the
word
Maru
might
appear
in
the
message
that
was
a
good
way
to
get
a
start
or
where
the
word
troop,
or
embarking
or
debarking
or
or
her
Oshima
or
Rabaul
these
these.
These
terms
that
Dodd
had
never
heard
of
before
she
had
to
suddenly
learn
how
to
spot
in
a
message
and
as
she
was,
she
was
trying
to
recall
for
me:
I'm
just
gonna
click
through
quickly.
B
B
So
it
was
incredibly
complicated
and
I'll
stop
here,
but
one
of
the
things
that
one
of
the
things
that
dot
remembered
is
that
she
would
be
looking
for
these
words
and
doing
the
math
in
her
head
and
when
she
got
a
message
that
seemed
important,
she
would
jump
up
and
take
it
to
a
woman
named
Miriam.
Who
was
the
overlap?
B
B
I
didn't
identify
a
little
bit
because
there
was
a
south
north,
the
conflict
in
Arlington
Hall
because
they
did
recruit
from
the
north
as
well
and
I
even
found
documents
that
in
which
there
was
there,
was
a
male
editor
from
New
York
who
had
been
recruited
to
help.
He
was
too
old
to
fight,
so
he
was
helping
and
he
referred
to
the
southern
women
as
the
jewels,
and
the
reason
he
did
was
because
there
were
so
many
women
named
opal
or
pearl
or
Ruby
or
velvet
and
so
or
know
about.
B
Well,
I
think
that
diamonds,
probably
not
real,
and
neither
is
your
fiancee
who
you
allegedly
have
so
so
Donna
Miriam,
didn't
like
each
other
a
lot,
but
they
had
to
work
together
on
this
incredible
crypto
cryptanalytic
assembly
line
that
was
very
very
quickly
established
because
they
were
breaking
those
messages.
They
were
breaking
hundreds
of
messages
a
day
and
the
contents
of
the
message
would
say
often
where
a
ship
where
a
supply
ship
was
going
to
be
at
noon
the
next
day.
B
So
so
they
were,
and
dot
remembers,
running
to
Miriam
the
overlap,
er
and-
and
she
would
have
been
because
they
had
to
get
those
messages
deciphered
quickly
and
get
the
intelligence
out
to
the
submarine
commanders
who
didn't
know
where
the
intelligence
was
coming
from.
They
wouldn't
see
the
actual
messages.
They
would
see
the
intelligence
from
the
messages
there
were
other
women
who
were
doing
traffic
analysis,
so
the
just
not
of
the
content
of
the
messages,
but
just
where
they're
coming
from,
where
they're
going
to
it's
something,
these
wartime
operations
would
become
the
NSA.
B
B
So
that,
as
people
were
breaking
messages,
if
they
needed
to
know
a
ship
name
or
commanders
name,
or
was
this
a
significant
person,
they
would
call
the
the
information
desk
that
was
maintaining
shipping
files
names
of
Morrow's,
that
they've
gotten
from
Barclays
are
know
from
Lloyds
of
London
that
had
shipping
registries
of
commercial
strip,
ships
that
had
been
transformed
into
army
supply
ships.
So
this
was
the
overlapping
group
and
I
I
found
these
photos
at
the
National
Archives
I
loved
them.
So
much
one
of
these
women
might
have
been
Miriam.
B
I
mean
who
knows
this
was
another
group.
This
was
a
very
important
group
of
women.
The
woman
who
you
see
with
the
dead
plant
laughing
down
at
her
work
was
recruited
out
of
Russell
Sage
College
at
age,
22.
She
and
a
West
Virginia
school
teacher
named
Wilma
Berryman,
who
was
presumably
one
of
those
barefoot
girls
from
West
Virginia.
They
broke
the
Japanese
army,
a
dress
code,
this
address
that
was
appended
to
the
beginning
of
every
message
and
because
they
broke
that-
and
that
was
a
discrete
message
system.
B
So
this
was
really
important
military
intelligence
that
the
women
were
were
working
in
addition
to
breaking
the
messages
and
just
the
woman
had
laughing
down
at
her
work
with
the
dead
plant
would
rise
to
become
the
first
female
deputy
director
of
the
NSA
and
Kara
Christie.
I
interviewed
her
five
times
before.
Unfortunately,
she
died
in
2016
before
the
book
was
published,
but
she
knew
that
she
knew
that
it
was
going
to
be
published.
B
This
was
another
group
of
women
who
were
it's
it's
hard
to
overstate
how
many
messages,
how
many
different
message
systems
were
traveling
all
over
the
world
at
any
given
time,
so
the
Japanese
diplomats
were
using
a
completely
different
system.
Japanese
diplomats
in
Europe
were
communicating
back
with
Tokyo.
B
This
was
a
system
called
purple
that,
if
you
know
anything
about
wartime
code
breaking
or
have
an
interest
in
it,
you
might
have
heard
of
purple,
which
was
a
system
that
produced
a
kind
of
intelligence
that
was
called
magic,
took
me
a
long
time
to
understand
that
purple
and
magic
were
sort
of
the
same
thing.
I
got
confused,
but
but
that
that
system
was
broken
by
a
woman
named
Genevieve
gros
Chen.
B
Before
the
war
in
1940
and
the
Kush
of
her
insight,
we
were
able
to
read
what
the
Japanese
diplomats
were
saying
to
the
home
office
in
Tokyo
about
their
conversations
with
Hitler
and
Mussolini
and
Axis
leaders.
So,
thanks
to
that
intelligence,
among
many
other
things,
we
knew
where
the
coast
of
France
was
particularly
well
fortified
and
where
it
was
not
particularly
well
fortified
in
advance
of
the
d-day
landings
and
planning
where
the
d-day
landings
should
take
place.
So
these
women
were
reading
that
diplomatic
traffic,
these
women
were
working
other
Japanese
diplomatic
systems.
B
There
was
an
african-american
unit.
The
army
had
a
segregated
unit
of
African
American
crypt,
analysts,
probably
schoolteachers
as
well,
who
were
working
the
commercial
codes
of
the
private
sector
and
ciphered
messages
traveling
with
companies
from
companies
and
banks.
They
were
to
see
who
was
doing
business
with
with
Germany
or
with
Japan,
who
was
doing
business
with
Hitler
or
Mitsubishi
they
weren't
supposed
to
be
obviously
so
so
that
was
a
really
interesting
and
important
unit.
There
were
other
women
doing
cybersecurity,
encrypting
our
own
messages
to
keep
them
safe.
B
Looking
if,
if
we
were
looking
for
problems
in
our
military
traffic
and
also
I
love,
this
part
planning
deception
program.
So
another
thing
about
the
d-day
landings:
when
we
were
when
we
were
about
to
embark
on
the
landings,
it
was
very
important
that
obviously,
that
the
Germans
not
anticipate
that
it
was
about
to
happen
and
not
know
where
it
was
going
to
happen.
B
So
these
women
studied
our
military
radio
traffic
and
learned
it
was
such
precision
that
they
were
able
to
create
dummy
traffic,
which
was
fake,
American
mill,
allied
military
traffic
to
persuade
the
Germans
that
we
had
a
huge
contingent
of
troops
poised
to
make
a
landing
in
the
pas-de-calais
region
of
France,
and
it
worked.
It
was
a
petition.
B
It
was
a
fictitious
first
army
called
few
sag
that
was
allegedly
led
by
Patton
and
it
did
not
exist,
but
they
convinced
the
Germans
that
it
did
exist
and
they
had
that
had
to
continue
happening
even
after
the
landing
so
that
the
Germans
wouldn't
relocate
their
troops
from
the
pas-de-calais
region.
So
that
just
goes
to
show.
You
know
how
how
massive
this
this
effort
was.
Meanwhile,
all
those
women
recruited
from
Goucher
and
and
the
Seven
Sisters
were
actually
waves,
so
the
Navy
had
a
slightly
different
operation.
This
is
Nebraska
Avenue
and
again
I'll.
B
Never
look
at
Nebraska
Avenue
the
same
way
just
as
I'd.
Never
look
at
route
50
the
same
way,
because
this
was
where
the
Department
of
Homeland
Security
is
now.
It
had
also
been
a
girl
school
called
Mount,
Vernon
Cemetery
girls
were
kicked
out.
They
had
to
take
classes
in
Garfinkel
department
store
until
until
Mount
Vernon
could
find
a
new
location
so
they're
doing
top-secret
code.
Breaking
work
also
had
the
compound
on
Nebraska,
Avenue
and
living
in
barracks
across
the
street,
and
there's
some
wonderful
anecdotes
I
find
from
women
about
living
in
the
barracks.
B
Just
I'll
just
tell
you
one
of
them
because
I
loved
it
so
much
actually
a
very,
very
wealthy
young
woman
from
New
York
who
thought
she
would
actually
be
inducted
as
an
as
an
officer
into
the
waves,
but
she
had
only
attended
music
school.
She
didn't
have
four
years
of
college,
so
she
found
herself
in
an
enlisted
capacity
and
it
was
actually
when
she
went
down
to
enlist.
She
was
very
nearsighted
and
she
had
memorized
the
eye
chart
because
they
were
eyesight.
B
But
when
I
was
reading
oral
histories
and
memoirs,
a
lot
of
women
remembered
that
naked,
physical
and
and
so
was
and
when
she
came
to
when
she
came
to
Nebraska
Avenue.
She
lived
in
the
barracks
and
she
loved
it.
She
had
not
enjoyed
New
York,
debutant
Society,
and
so
she
was
living
with
a
young
woman
from
the
Midwest
whose
father
ran
a
funeral
parlor
and
he
had
given
her
as
a
Christmas
present
a
music
box
in
the
shape
of
a
casket,
and
she
said
every
day.
B
I
had
it
good
off
and
I
would
say:
Oh
Dottie
what
a
lovely
cast.
We
don't
want
to
love
you
music
box,
so,
but
that
was
a
I
mean
the
women
were
ultimately
when
the
waves
were
created.
Even
women
who
didn't
have
you
gone
to
college
but
Hugh
had
enlisted
and
showed
aptitude
were
funneled
into
the
code-breaking
operation.
There
were
4,000
women
working
up
at
where
Homeland
Security
is
now.
There
were
7,000
women
working
in
Arlington
Hall,
so
there
were
11,000
women
at
least
doing
this
work.
B
B
Shogo
ichi
in
in
these
memos
that
the
women
still
remembered,
70
or
75
years
later
and
I
also
found
memos
that
showed
how
they
were
responding
to
what
was
going
on
in
the
Pacific
after
the
Battle
of
Midway,
which
was
our
great
code-breaking
triumph
in
June
of
1942.
When
we
were
starting
our
pushback
across
the
Pacific,
the
amphibious
landings
that
our
Marines
and
Navy
were
making
the
women
would
they
will
receive
messages
from
their
commanding
officers.
Saying
something's
about
to
happen,
we
need
more
additives,
recovered,
more
additives
recovered.
B
There
was
another
woman
who
was
the
watch
officer
the
night
that
they
broke
a
message
saying
that
her
brother
ship
was
about
to
be
hit
by
a
kamikaze.
So,
though,
that
was
the
sort
of
deep
awareness
that
they
had.
There
were
other
women
who
were
decoding
American
messages
that
had
casualty
lists
on
them.
So,
even
even
when
we
were
winning
even
the
battles
that
we
won,
they
knew
what
the
cost
was
of
those
engagements.
This
is
just
again,
these
are
in
the
National
Archives.
These
are
work
sheets.
B
This
is
the
five
digit
Japanese
naval
code
that
they
were
working,
trying
to
subtract
out
the
additives
trying
to
do
some
conjectures
of
what
the
what
the
language
was
showing.
This
is
another
completely
different
cipher
that
was
being
used
by
Japanese
communicating
between
Islands.
Actually,
students
of
the
Pacific
Ward
know
that
there
was
a
pivotal
moment
in
the
war
when
we
were
able
to
when
we
were
able
to
break
messages.
B
That
told
where
Admiral
Yamamoto,
who
was
the
architect
in
Pearl
Harbor,
was
going
to
be
flying
on
an
inspection
tour
and
we
knew
down
to
the
second
what
his
itinerary
was
going
to
be.
There
were
women
working
that
inner
island,
cipher,
building
that
art
in
ireri
and
and
the
decision
was
made
to
shoot
his
plane
down,
and
there
are
oral
histories
that
the
women
write
of
the
cheering
that
went
up
in
the
naval
annex
compound
when
they
knew
that
that
plane
had
been
shot
down.
As
a
result
of
the
code
breaking
these
are
just.
B
This
is
something
that
dot
would
have
seen
actually
in
the
in
the
army
facility
of
the
four-digit
Japanese
army
code.
This
was
a
different
group
of
women.
Just
to
talk
a
little
bit
about
the
Atlantic
Ocean.
As
the
war
went
on,
we
became
equal
partners
with
the
British
in
breaking
the
Enigma
codes
that
the
Japanese
you
that
the
German
u-boats
were
using.
You
might
have
seen
the
imitation
game
when
Alan
Turing
has
this
moment
of
inspiration.
He
understands
how
the
German
naval
u-boat
code
works.
B
The
Germans
actually
became
suspicious
after
that
that
we
were
reading
their
their
cipher
system
and
they
changed
the
big
machine
and
added
a
rotor,
and
we
couldn't
read
it
anymore
for
eight
months
and
and
we
were
losing
ships
in
the
Atlantic
Ocean,
and
so
there
was
a
top
top-secret
project
to
build
sort
of
bigger,
faster
machines
that
could
broke
that
four-rotor
enigma
code.
There
were
women
who
were
helping
build
those
machines
in
Dayton
Ohio,
who
then
came
down
to
Washington
and
were
running
them.
This
is
this
is
what
the
machines
looked
at,
looked
like.
B
They
could
they
could
detect
the
key
they
could
detect
the
rotor
setting
which
changed
everyday
in
the
German
u-boats
and
then
run
it,
and
so
those
machines
were
actually
used
just
to
detect
where
the
setting
was
and
then
the
message
would
be
run
through
smaller
machines
that
would
actually
decode
the
messages.
Women
were
working,
those
machines.
B
They
were
also
translating
the
messages
from
German
into
English,
and
then
they
were
writing
up
intelligence
reports
that
would
be
given
to
the
military-
and
these
were
just
some
of
the
women
in
Dayton
who
were
wiring
the
rotors,
and
actually
they
had
a
really
good
time
in
Dayton
and
and
had
a
good
time
in
in
Washington.
Also,
although
the
work
itself
was
very
stressful
and
and
just
to
go
back
yeah
just
to
go
back
one
one,
one
way
in
which
the
landscape
of
Washington
was
forever
changed.
B
One
of
the
women
recruited
from
Wellesley
describes
walking
into
the
naval
annex
to
start
her
midnight
shift
in
the
German
section
and
thinking.
They
know
that
the
d-day
landings
gonna
happen,
but
she
looks
at
the
full
moon
and
she
doesn't
think
it's
gonna
happen
on
a
full
moon,
so
she
thinks
that
there
won't
be
any
landing
tonight
and
she
goes
to
her.
She
goes
to
her
position
and
then
about
at
about
1:30
in
the
in
the
morning.
B
Our
time
the
messages
start
coming
in
from
the
Germans
and-
and
they
say
things
like
enemy
landing
at
the
mouth
of
the
Seine,
so
the
German,
u-boats
and
also
the
German
army
are
the
women
who
are
breaking.
These
messages
are
experiencing
the
d-day
landing
from
the
point
of
view
of
the
Germans.
So
as
the
Germans
are
saying-
oh
my
god,
there
are,
you
know
thousands
and
thousands
of
Allied
ships
on
the
horizon.
Oh
my
god,
it's
really
happening.
Oh
my
god.
It's
happening
in
Normandy,
not
in
the
pot
of
clay.
They.
B
B
B
So,
in
addition
to
those
moments,
oh
sorry,
I'm
going
backwards,
the
women
were
having
a
good
time
in
Washington.
They
were,
they
were
sending
a
lot
of
letters
to
men.
They
were
in
fact,
my
central
character,
and
this
was
true
of
many
of
the
women
they
correspond
to
during
the
war
with
men
they
would
marry,
and
my
central
character
in
fact
gets
engaged
to
her
husband
purely
through
correspondence,
and
this
was
so
common
that
I
kept
saying
to
her.
Wait.
You
you
hadn't,
seen
him
right.
B
He
hadn't
come
back
right,
you,
you
hadn't,
you
were
doing
it
all
through
the
mail
and-
and
she
just
said
yeah
I
mean
she's
like
accepted
that
that
was
how
they
became
engaged
because
it
just
wasn't
unusual
at
the
time
what
her.
What
her
husband
didn't
know
was
that
she
was
actually
writing
five
or
six
men
during
during
the
course
of
the
war,
and
but
that
was-
and
she
was
actually
she
was
actually
reluctant
to
tell
me
that
for
a
while.
B
But
but
again
one
of
my
one
of
the
things
I'm
grateful
to
for
the
records
here
is
is
the
piece
on
Arlington
farms
confirm
that
there
was
actually
one
young
woman,
who's
writing.
12
men
and
I
was
actually
quite
common.
Women
were
told
that
they
keep
up
soldier
morale
and
so
they,
but
they
were
often
quite
innocent.
B
You
know
letters
just
just
literally
writing
to
cheer
up
these
men,
many
of
whom
they
had
never
met
just
just
doing
what
they
could
to
to
for
the
service
of
morale
and
sending
these
small
snapshots
that
they
were
taking
incessantly.
This
is
not
actually
writing
to
her
fiance.
Aren't
we
cute
Carolyn
as
the
other
of
this
twosome
now
Carolyn
was
an
awesome
code,
breaker
from
Bourbon
Mississippi
schoolteacher,
who
would
ultimately
end
up
working
for
the
NSA,
so
they're
writing
these
cute
little.
B
You
know
here's
what
we're
doing
on
the
beach,
because
that's
all
they
could
say
they
couldn't
tell
their
fiance.
Some
husband,
like
the
incredibly
important
work
that
that
they're
doing,
and
so
this
is
that
this
is
again
an
Esther
Buble
photo
of
the
young
women
at
Arlington
farms
awaiting
mail
call,
and
this
actually
is
dot
my
central
character
and
her
friend
crow
Carolyn.
She
called
her
crow
and
they
stayed
friends
for
the
rest
of
their
lives.
She
married
Jim
Bruce
who
she
was
communicating
with
crow
who's.
B
The
shorter
married,
a
wonderful
man
and
crow
insisted
that
dot
and
Jim
come
up
and
meet
her
husband
before
she
would
consent
to
marry
him
because
dots
and
dots
imprimatur
was
so
important
to
her
and
I'll
just
end
with
this
photo
just
to
talk
about.
You
know
it's
very
hard
for
the
women,
as
it
was,
of
course,
for
men
returning
from
war
to
adjust.
This
is
a
group
of
Navy
code
breakers
to
adjust
to
civilian
life
and
the
work
had
been
so
stressful,
but
it
also
been
so
urgent
and
important.
B
They
were
living
together
in
apartments
or
in
barracks.
They
were
often
being
fed.
They
didn't
have
any
domestic
responsibilities
generally,
maybe
for
the
first
time
in
their
lives
and
and
then
all
of
a
sudden
they're.
You
know
thank
you
very
much.
The
Navy
women
get
a
medal,
they're
told
never
to
show
it
to
anybody.
They're
told
thank
you
for
your
service
and
never
talk
about
what
you
did
never
use
any
words
that
you
used
in
the
compound
again
for
the
rest
of
your
lives
and
the
women
took
this
very
seriously.
B
I
had
to
pull
the
stories
out
of
a
number
of
these
women
and
convince
them
that,
75
years
later,
it
was
okay
to
finally
talk,
no
in
fact
really
dot
who
you
saw
she
at
one
point
she
said.
Well,
you
know
what
are
they
gonna
do
send
me
to
prison
and
and
I
said
it
your
agent,
Olivia,
Prison
and
and
and
that
finally
convinced
her
to
use
words
like
overlap
or
that
she
had
never
uttered
in
75
years
and
never
uttered
outside
the
compound
of
Arlington
Hall.
B
So
this
was
a
group
of
Navy
women
that
missed
each
other
so
much
after
the
war.
They
were
all
of
course,
old.
Go
home,
don't
show
anybody,
your
medal
get
married,
have
babies
and
they
did,
but
they
were
suddenly
living
very
isolated
lives.
Some
of
them
were
really
traumatized
by
the
stress
of
the
work
that
they
had
done,
particularly
the
women
working,
the
German
codes,
and
they
they
were
isolated.
They
couldn't
get
appliances
because
faculties
have
been
churning
out
tanks
and
bombers
and
and
not
washing
machines,
and,
and
so
they
were
wringing
out
sheets.
B
You
know
over
the
in
the
bathtubs
and
taking
care
of
little
babies
and
and
missing
each
other.
So
this
group
of
women
who
were
such
good
friends
at
the
naval
compound
started
something
that
I've
never
heard.
I've
caught
a
round-robin
letter
and
the
way
it
works
is
I
would
write
a
letter
about
how
my
day
was
going.
I'd,
send
it
to
the
second
woman.
She
would
write
her
own
letter.
She
would
send
both
letters
on
to
the
third
woman
write
her
own
send
three
on
to
the
fourth.
B
It
would
make
its
way
all
the
way
around
and
then
I
would
take
out.
My
old
letter
I'd
write
a
new
letter
and
it
would
travel
around
the
circle
again
so
that
round-robin
letter
kept
going
through
the
40s,
the
50s,
the
60s,
the
70s,
the
80s
and
90s.
Until
I
was
doing
my
reporting,
there
were
two
women
left
and
they
were
still
writing
each
other
on
almost
a
daily
basis,
and
unfortunately,
one
of
the
women
died
during
the
course
of
my
research
but
Ruth
mirskiy
from
Queens
right.
B
There
is
still
alive
and
her
email
address
is
Ruth
the
wave
because
they
were
code,
girls,
then,
and
their
code,
girls
now
and
many
of
them
are
online
and
and
still
emailing
and
still
so
proud
of
their
service
that
that
that's
her
email
handle
so
I'll
end
there
and
and
take
take
questions.
I
is
a
spec.
B
C
Have
read
your
book
and
I?
Think
it's
wonderful,
thank
you,
but
my
question
doesn't
really
have
to
do
with
the
women.
Specifically,
you
made
a
point
in
talking
about
how
we
totally
broke
Japanese
codes,
that
we
knew
so
much
that
my
question
is:
how
did
the
Japanese
not
realize
this
and
you
said
that
we
had
sent
planes
up
and
that
they
thought
that
was
how
we
discovered
exactly
where
they
were
as
far
as
fighting
battles,
but
was
that
enough?
C
B
A
great
question-
and
you
know
there
are
many-
there-
are
many
books
on
the
code-breaking,
the
Pacific
War-
that
attempt
to
answer
that
question.
Just
as
you
say,
sometimes
when
we
were
singing
these
supply
ships,
you
know
on
a
daily
basis,
thousands
of
ships.
We
would
send
up
planes
and
the
Japanese,
so
the
Japanese
would
attribute
to
being
spotted
by
plane
or
they
would
attribute
to
coast
Watchers.
You
know
who
were
people,
you
know
from
the
islands
who
and
there
there
were
coast
Watchers,
but
it
and
after
the
Battle
of
Midway.
B
You
know
that
particular
code-breaking
triumph
did
find
its
way
into
Walter
Winchell's
column
and
the
Navy
shut
it
down
as
fast
as
they
could,
and
they
were
very
afraid
that
the
Japanese
would
would
get
wind
of
that
because,
of
course,
if
they,
if
they
knew,
they
would
stop
using
that
code
system
and
it
would
go
dark
and
it
is
I
mean
it
is
still
very
surprising.
That
and
I
can't
completely
answer
that
question
as
to
why
they
never
figured
it
out.
As
I
said,
the
Germans
became
suspicious,
sometimes
ya,
know.
C
B
Can't
answer
that
question
I
know
that
the
Germans
did
and
the
Germans
were
reading
our
convoy
code
at
one
point
and
and
actually
the
Americans
were
trying
to
convince
the
British
that
the
convoy
code
had
been
broken
and
because
the
British
were
slow
to
acknowledge
it,
and
so
we
were,
we
were
actually
monitoring
the
British.
You
know
the
Allies
would
would
monitor
each
other's
signals
to
try
to
convince
them
about
about
the
Germans
and
and
I
I'm,
not
an
expert
on
that
aspect
of
whether
whether
the
Japanese
were
breaking
our
codes.
B
B
I'd
love
to
without
belaboring
it
I
mean
she's
a
hugely
important
figure.
Her
name
really
should
be
chiseled
into
a
building
here
in
DC,
or
there
should
be
a
statue
she's.
The
reason
why
we
knew
how
the
Japanese
naval
fleet
code
worked.
She
had
been
a
schoolteacher
in
Texas
and
she
actually
joined
up
during
World
War
one.
B
E
I,
don't
have
a
question
but
a
comment
which
I
hope
is
a
response
to
your
question
about
our
code
in
the
Pacific
in
the
early
days
of
World
War,
two,
maybe
even
before
we
were
dragged
into
it,
our
code
was
broken
quickly.
There
were
a
lot
of
problems
with
the
code
and
then
finally,
there
was
a
man
who
I
think
he
grew
up
on
a
Navajo
Indian
Reservation.
His
father
was
a
minister
and
he
got
this
idea
that
well
we'll
use
a
different
language,
and
so
they
used
the
Navajo
language,
and
so
they
called
them.
C
B
It
we
never
have
to
change
the
out
right
and
not
all
of
our
codes
were
were
the
ho
codes
but
you're
exactly
right
and
those
were
Navajo
code
talkers
and
in
fact,
I
did
come
upon
an
oral
history
of
one
wave
who
was
also
trained
in
the
Navajo
language.
To
do
the
code
talking
because
I
guess
we
didn't
have
enough
native
Navajo
speakers,
but
I
think
that's
also.
B
A
great
example
of
you
know:
I
had
that
caption
that
global
war
breeds
inclusion,
and
you
know
that
the
the
Navajo
code
talkers
are
another
example
of
how,
in
a
global
emergency,
we
were
willing
to
avail
ourselves
of
the
communication.
Talents
of
a
marginalized
group
of
citizens,
who
you
know,
despite
how
they
have
been
treated,
did
come
forward
to
serve.
You
know
in
an
crucial,
crucial
and
invaluable.
F
I'm
just
loving
the
book,
I
thinkI
right
there
with
Doc
Braden
when
she
gets
off
the
bus
or
when
she
gets
there
and,
like
all
her
taxi
fare
I
mean
all
her
money
goes
to
the
taxi
fare
I
can't
even
pay
the
first
month's
rent.
It's
just
I
love
the
way
you
draw
people
in
thank
you
and
I
may
have
missed
this
at
the
beginning.
But
my
question
is
cuz.
B
It
were
women,
and
many
of
them
were
ex
schoolteachers
and
I
thought
that
might
make
for
an
interesting
article
or
something
and
I
went
out
to
the
Cryptologic
Museum
at
Fort
Meade
and
talked
to
the
NSA
historians,
who
laid
out
this
much
larger
story
of
women
being
recruited
to
break
the
Japanese
and
German
codes,
and
the
Soviet
effort
at
that
point
was
was
tiny.
So
I
couldn't
believe
that
this
story,
hadn't
been
told
and
I.
B
Think
much
like
NASA
knew
that
the
african-american
female
mathematicians
of
hidden
figures
NASA
knew
about
those
women
and
it
took
an
author
like
Margo,
leash,
utterly
who
to
write
a
book
to
make
it
known
to
the
public.
And
similarly,
the
NSA
had
known
that
you
know
about
these
women
who
came
to
work
during
the
war.
I.
Don't
think
anybody
fully
appreciated
how
many
there
were,
because,
unlike
Bletchley
Park,
which
is
a
centralized
operation,
we
had
the
army
and
we
had
the
Navy
and
I.
B
Don't
think
that
anybody
had
really
looked
at
the
numbers
to
see
that
it
was
more
than
10,000
women,
but
so
I
thought
it
would
be
an
incredible
story
to
tell.
But
the
hurdles
as
Meredith
mentioned
were
I
didn't
know
if
I
could
find
any
living.
Women
and
and
I
knew
that
they
would
be
in
their
90's
and
I.
Didn't
know
whether
there
would
be
any
records,
because
you
know
you'd
think
that
the
story
would
have
already
been
told
if
they
were.
B
But
you
know,
and
and
and
I
think
it's
an
important
point,
because
the
women
were
so
good
about
keeping
this
secret,
that
their
their
contribution
was
really
on
the
verge
of
being
lost.
They
had
never
talked
about
it,
they
had
played
by
the
rules.
They
took
it
seriously.
Nobody
ever
told
him
that
the
valve
secrecy
they
took
was
lifted
in
the
1990s.
When
men
started
writing
memoirs,
you
know
the
male
naval
officers,
nobody
told
him
in
a
way
like
when
I
found
them.
B
It
was
like
it
was
like
you
teared
these
stories
of
Japanese
soldiers
that
stagger
out
from
the
jungle
in
the
1950s,
and
they
all
know
the
war's
over,
like
the
women
were
like
that,
they
didn't
know
that
it
was
okay
to
talk,
and
so
they
had
just
they
had
just
kept
quiet
and,
as
a
result,
I
mean
this
was
the
dawn
of
cybersecurity.
They
were
doing
cybersecurity,
they
were
doing.
They
were
hacking
into
enemy
communication
systems.
So
we
still
have
this
persistent
notion
that
that
women
don't
belong
in
tech.
B
You
know
that
the
people
will
still
posit
this
idea
that
maybe
that's
the
reason
there
aren't
more
women
in
Saucon,
Valley,
they're,
just
biologically
not
fit,
which
was
that
explanation
proffered
by
a
Google
engineer
this
summer,
when
in
fact
it's
because
the
women
kept
the
secret
that
that
we
don't
realize
that
the
women
pioneered
so
much
of
the
tech
industry,
cybersecurity
and
also
computer
programming.
So
one
of
the
hurdles
was
finding
women
and
I.
B
Just
did
it
in
any
way
that
I
could
the
NSA
help
me
find
dot
I
placed
an
ad
in
world
war
ii,
magazine's
website
that
led
me
to
the
woman
who
explained
how
that
she
recovered
naval
additives.
A
friend
of
mine
whose
mother
went
to
Wellesley
class
of
42
went
to
visit
her
mother
at
an
assisted
living
facility
in
Maine,
and
she
came
back
and
she
said:
I've
got
three
for
you
and
in
fact
she
had
she
had
said
at
the
dinner
table.
B
There
were
rosters.
There
were
addresses
there.
Were
these
memos
about
additive
recovery,
about
the
show,
goiti
messages
I
could
see
where
the
women
moved.
I
could
see
when
their
names
change
from
maiden
names
to
married
names.
These
records
had
just
been
ignored,
so
I
the
hurdle
turned
out
to
be
having
a
deadline
and
and
not
being
able
to
spend
a
year
at
the
National
Archives.
So
anyway,
thanks
for
asking.
G
H
Want
to
compliment
you
on
your
presentation,
because
there
is
so
much
that
you
have
said
that
it's
just
brought
it
back
out.
I
was
teaching
school
in
a
little
town
called
Oakland
Iowa
and
the
recruiter
came
out.
He
wasn't
wearing
a
uniform.
He
was
just
dressed
in
a
suit.
Was
he
good-looking,
but
he
came,
but
he
came
I've
been
teaching
for
three
years
and
he
just
caught
me
in
a
day
and
he
said,
would
you
be
interested
in
going
to
Washington,
DC
and
working
on
something?
H
H
Was
met
at
Union,
Station
I
was
taken
to
Arlington
farms
and
then
I
was
had
the
position
and
then
I
was
taken
to
Arlington
halls
and
and
signed
up
and
now
I
didn't
work
as
a
codebreaker
I
worked
in
the
communications
center.
In
other
words,
I
was
sending
the
communications
for
the
goodbee
guys
out
to
their
units
and
in
the
year
and
the
Pacific
as
well
as
in
the
European
area.
You.
H
Yes,
yes,
and
then
we
were
getting
messages
in
and
it
was
the
communications
center
was
full
of.
Ladies,
like
you
said,
there
were
two
or
three
gentlemen,
but
it
was
ladies
from
the
age
of
18,
and
there
was
one
that
was
80
some
years
old
that
had
been
working
on
on
people's
genealogy.
That
sort
of
thing,
but
she
just
wanted
to
do
something
for
the
war
effort.
She
was
the
sweetest
lady
and
she
fit
right
in
with
the
rest
of
us.
H
G
B
G
H
But
we
did
see
a
lot
of
government.
You
know
messages
that
went
in
and
out
of
our
comm
center,
but
then
I
moved
out
because
the
guys
were
coming
back
from
the
service
and
they
needed
jobs
too.
So
you
can
imagine
one
day.
I
was
sitting
there.
I
hadn't
been
married
by
that
time
and
I
had
one
daughter
and
I
was
pregnant
with
a
third
second
one
and
the
band
came
out
and
he
said:
there's
a
gentleman
who's
been
in
the
service
and
he's
going
to
have
your
job,
because
that's
the
category
so
I
thought.