Unsung Heroes

The journey to publication continues. Editing and more editing… but I am getting closer. Today I wanted to share a bit more from They Roared. I never tire of these amazing women and continue to be an awe of what they have accomplished. Celebrate them with me today!

Virginia Dae Aderholdt

Did you know that at the end of World War II, it was a woman cryptographer who decoded the message on August 14, 1945, that the Japanese surrendered, that was sent directly to the White House? It was! Virginia Dare Aderholdt graduated with high honors from Wyandotte High school, studied at Mitchell Community College in Statesville, Lenoir-Rhyn University, a small private university, in Hickory, North Carolina, Bethany College in West Virginia, the Teachers College at Columbia College, and the Biblical Seminary in New York. Virginia then studied at the Tokyo School of Japanese Language and Culture in Tokyo, Japan, where she spent four years. When World War II was raging, Virginia worked at Arlington Hall, as so many of the cryptologists did and most of them were women. She was ace at translating Japanese messages and very adept at recognizing and translating those in an older diplomatic code, called JAH. She was well practiced in Japanese, because of her previous studies, and could decrypt and translate at the same time.

Ann Zeilinger Caracristi

Ann Zeilinger Caracristi planned on being a journalist when she graduated from Russell Sage College in Troy, New York. The dean of the college recommended her to the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS), who recruited her upon graduation to work in a position so secret that she did not know what she would be doing. They trained her as a code breaker, and that is what she did! The crowded space that they worked in got so hot in the summer that they issued employees salt tablets to avoid dehydration. Ann became a cryptanalytic legend. Friends and colleagues affectionately knew her as “Miss Ann.”