Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

by Liza Mundy

To break a complex enciphered code like the ones used by the Japanese military, it’s essential to have what’s known as “depth”: lots and lots of intercepted messages that can be lined up and compared. In the panicked atmosphere after Pearl Harbor, the group made a stab at a solution nonetheless. In 1941, a British colleague brought some Japanese Army intercepts to Friedman’s operation in the old Munitions Building. Friedman shut four of his staffers—Solomon Kullback, Wilma Berryman, Delia Taylor, and Abraham Sinkov—in a room, telling them not to emerge until they had broken something. The job was just too big. After about three months, Solomon Kullback stood up and shoved his desk back into the German section. “I’ve had it,” he said. The only positive outcome was that Delia Taylor and Abe Sinkov fell in love, got married, and moved into a houseboat at the wharf.