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

by Liza Mundy

There was periodic unrest in the city, and in the country, as civil rights advocates pushed to advance social changes that were taking place as a result of the war. In 1944, Eleanor Roosevelt and WAVES director Mildred McAfee managed to gain entry for African American women into the WAVES. But there would be no racial experimenting at the stodgy and sometimes paranoid Naval Annex, where top officers considered any newcomer—anybody with an unorthodox background—to be a security risk. In a June 1945 memo, Commander J. N. Wenger wrote that he had explored the “question of employment of colored WAVES at Naval Communications Annex” and felt integrating the code-breaking unit would be too risky. He concluded that it would be “unwise to conduct an experiment of such serious implications” in a unit where security was so important, and ventured that “there are many other activities in the Navy where experiments of this sort can be carried on without so much danger in the event that difficulties arise.” Black WAVES would have to take their patriotism, their intellect, and their talent elsewhere,