The Brilliant of the Women Code Breakers of WW11

I took history in high school and college, yet never did I hear about the important role that women played in breaking code for America and its allies.  In 1944, the code-breakers intercepted 30,000 water transport messages a month, that they were able to solve through an intensive search for patterns and some "golden" guesses.  That information enabled the Navy to pinpoint and sink almost every supply ship heading to the Philippines or the South Pacific.  Additionally, before D-Day, the female teams of code breakers participated in the effort to give the Germans false information and fake radio traffic about the site of the Allied landing.

Why did we hear nothing about this for almost 70 years?  Partially because of the vow of secrecy each woman who entered the program took.  Recently, collections in the National Archives have been declassified, and surviving women, in their 90's have started to tell their stories.

Women were often recruited for this top secret endeavor from colleges, but some were also taken from the classroom.  New college graduates just starting a teaching career thought the prospect of learning code and helping the war effort exciting and patriotic.

Because of the excellent work of these unsung heroes, both the WAC's and WAVES were formed.  Army WAC's were accepted beginning in 1942, while Navy WAVES came along a bit later.  The Navy's female code-breakers had the opportunity to become commissioned officers.  They went to boot camp, cut their hair short, and were subject to harsh Navy discipline.  However, they loved the pride and camaraderie, and in a year there were 4,000 code-breakers at the WAVES barracks D, working three shifts a day, marching and singing, "I don't need a man to give me sympathy/Why I needed it before is a mystery."

Just as the book and movie Hidden Figures revealed the role of women, African American women, had played in the space program, Code Girls, by Lisa Mundy, reveals the important role women played in winning WW11.  Why we're just hearing about this now, I do not know.