The initial break was made in the Pacific, but Washington also got busy, recovering additives and code groups so that blanks could be filled in. More messages were intercepted, and the fast-working, far-flung teams exchanged findings. Among those digging out code recoveries was Fran Steen from Goucher. The inter-island cipher JN-20 “carried further details” about Yamamoto’s upcoming trip, so Raven’s crew of women were busy as well, adding facts and insights. Together the code breakers were able to reconstruct Yamamoto’s precise itinerary, which called for a day of hops between Japanese bases in the Solomon Islands and New Britain. Their translation concluded that the commander would “depart RR (Rabaul) at 0600 in a medium attack plane escorted by six fighters; arrive RXZ (Ballale) at 0800”; depart at 1100 and land at RXP (Buin) at 1110; leave there at 1400 and return to Rabaul at 1540, traveling by plane and, at one point, minesweeper. He would be conducting an inspection tour and visiting the sick and wounded.
It was an extraordinary moment. The Americans knew exactly where the enemy’s most valuable—and irreplaceable—naval commander would be, and when. Yamamoto was known for punctuality. Far above the pay grade of those working additive recovery, Nimitz and other top war officials decided Yamamoto would be shot down. It was not a light decision, assassinating an enemy commander, but they made it. The itinerary, as one memo later put it, signed the admiral’s “death warrant.”
In what was known as Operation Vengeance, sixteen U.S. Army fighter planes, Lockheed P-38s, went into the air on April 18, taking off from a Guadalcanal airfield. They knew Yamamoto would be flying in a Japanese bomber the Americans called a Betty, escorted by Zero fighter planes. The Americans calculated their own flight plan to meet the route they anticipated Yamamoto would be taking, planning to encounter him over Bougainville. They flew for so long that the pilots were getting drowsy; the white coastline of Bougainville was racing beneath them when one of the pilots broke radio silence and shouted, “Bogeys! Eleven o’clock!” There they were, on the horizon: six Zeros, two Bettys. The Japanese did not see the Americans at first, but once they did, the escorting Zeros moved to block the U.S. fighter planes, firing so the bombers could escape. There was a hectic battle in which it never became clear who had shot down whom, but one Betty bomber plummeted into the trees, the other into the surf. Yamamoto’s body was found in the Bougainville jungle, his white-gloved hand clutching his sword.
Cheering broke out at the Naval Annex when they heard the news. The architect of the Pearl Harbor attack was dead. The payback felt complete.
“Let me tell you, the day his plane went down, there was a big hoop-de-doo,” recalled Myrtle Otto, the Boston-bred code breaker who had beat her own brothers in the race to enlist. “We really felt we had done something really fantastic, because that was—well, it was more than the beginning of the end. They knew it was coming down, but it was really—that was an exciting day.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Forlorn Shoe
Spring 1944
Arlington Hall, being more of a civilian operation, was a far cry from the Naval Annex when it came to attitude and culture. The Army’s suburban Virginia code-breaking operation was equally serious when it came to work, but far more tolerant and freewheeling when it came to life. One day Dot Braden got a glimpse of just how open-minded her workplace was. Feeling nauseous while she worked at her table, Dot visited the dispensary to get something to settle her stomach. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?” the nurse asked.
“I don’t think so,” replied Dot, an answer that instantly struck her as preposterous. She didn’t think so? Of course she was not pregnant! There was no way she could be. Why would she even have said that? Probably because she was flustered and taken aback by the question. Looking around, though, she realized how many women at Arlington Hall were. The nurses treated them with kind consideration and nobody expected them to quit. Some might be married; some might not be. Nobody asked. Things happened. Washington was wide-open. Soldiers and sailors were everywhere, and anything went. Men might be shipped out without warning, and couples who were about to get married didn’t have a chance. Sometimes the wedding, if it happened, happened somewhat after the fact.
For her part, Dot kept her chastity intact. For her, life in Washington meant writing letters to men and having fun with other women. The same was true of her friend Crow, who was fun-loving but shy and didn’t date much. Neither of them had much time to: At Arlington Hall their schedule consisted of seven days of code-breaking work, followed by an eighth day off, followed by seven more days of work. On their one day off they’d be “dead dog tired,” as Dot put it, and would walk over to Columbia Pike to do errands and grocery shopping.
The adventures they enjoyed in their free time were tame and lighthearted. Once, Dot had a friend visiting from Lynchburg, and they decided to attend one of the hotel balls. As an icebreaker, the women were told to stand on one side of the dance floor and the men on the other. The women were instructed to take off a shoe and throw it onto the dance floor, and the men were to pick up a random shoe and dance with whoever owned it. But the problem with shoes was this: People didn’t have many, and they couldn’t get new ones often. Shoes were rationed, and they had to save up ration coupons to buy a new pair. In the interim, all anybody could do was get their existing shoes half-soled. With all the walking Dot did between her apartment and Arlington Hall—at least three miles each day—she was always wearing through the bottom of her shoes. She had purchased a pair of blue I. Miller shoes she cherished, but for the dance she had worn her other good pair, strappy white sandals, and there was a hole as big as a quarter in the sole.
Dot wasn’t aware of the hole, so she lobbed the sandal onto the floor, and it flipped upside down in such a way that all the lights in the room seemed to be shining on that hole. No man grabbed it, and the shoe lay there, sad-looking, while couples danced around it. Dot didn’t have a partner for that dance. Her friend was a giggly girl and they both thought that was the funniest thing they’d ever seen, Dot’s forlorn shoe upturned with that awful hole in it, and no man willing to pick it up.
They did other small things that seemed daring. Dot sometimes would experiment with using carbon paper to color her hair. Hair dye was expensive, but you could sprinkle water on the carbon paper and smear it on your hair to darken it. Crow joked that she was going to tell people her roommate dyed her hair. Dot knew she wouldn’t. The carbon paper didn’t work all that well, but they did their best with what they had.