As the number of messages increased, the ranks of people solving them grew steadily more female. By the fourth quarter of 1943, 183 men and 473 women were working on JN-25 in Washington—more than twice as many women as men. One memo noted that it was impossible to keep the women in the dark as to what the messages said. The memo added that the most important secret was the fact that JN-25 was being worked at all, and this secret was at the “mercy of the humblest worker who ever glanced at a work book.”
