The Washington DC National Mall when my
Mom and Dad worked
at the Navy Department during World War II, which is how they met. The
Navy Department building is at right center, just above the trees, the front
half of the long series of structures along the right side of the Mall,
entrance at Constitution Avenue and 17th Street NW. The rest of the series
comprises the Munitions Building, which was the Pentagon before there was
Pentagon. These were all built in 1918. The structures that line the left
of the Mall in the top photo are temporary buildings (Tempos) I-J-K-L that
housed the US Navy Bureau of Supplies and Accounts during the War. The
complex at the bottom (on the Washington Monument grounds), Tempos 3-4-5,
was occupied by the Bureau of Ships. All these buildings are gone now,
replaced by gardens and memorials including the World War II memorial at the
east (near, in this photo) end of the Reflecting Pool, where the oval-ish
pool is in the photo, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at about the far end
of the Munitions building in the photo. Constitution Avenue
(a.k.a. B Street) is to the right; the diagonal street is Virginia
Avenue, the Lincoln Memorial is at the far end of the pool, and Memorial
Bridge connects to Arlington, Virginia, and the Arlington National Cemetery,
where my WWII Marine veteran Uncle Pete is
buried, not far from the Iwo Jima memorial (he was there). All of this
is in walking distance.
Aerial view of DC Mall 1946:
Photo: US Coast and Geodetic Survey LOC G3851.A4 1946.U2;
click image to enlarge.
See the full
photo.
Federal Works Agency map 1946: Detail of National Mall -
Click to enlarge
The Navy Department building in 1953 (US Navy photo) - Click to enlarge
National Mall aerial view, 1946. The temporary buildings where my Mom lived
are in the bottom half of the image, left of center on the "peninsula". The
Navy Department is above the right end of the mall. The Lincoln Memorial
and Memorial Bridge are at far left; the Washington Monument is at far right
with long shadow. The corresponding map at left labels the buildings; it's
just a small section of
a much
larger map. My father was still working in the Navy Building in 1946,
and soon after that he'd be working in Tempos I-J-K-L alongside the
Reflecting Pool when they were occupied by the newly formed CIA. He took me
to all of these buildings when I was a child. The temporary buildings as
well as the Navy and Munitions buildings were demolished between 1964 and
1971.
WAVES barracks and Signals work
WAVES barracks in West Potomac Park; Right: Curie
Hall. Photos: DC History Center AE0300.
I had always assumed that my Mom lived in the temporary buildings
that were adjacent to the Reflecting Pool, because I remember her pointing
them out to me in the 1950s, picnicking on the Lincoln Memorial lawn. But I
see on the Federal Works Agency map that behind them (about where the FDR
memorial is today) were other temporary buildings explicitly designated as
dormitories and residence halls and identified by the
Historical Society of Washington DC as Navy WAVES barracks, naming Curie
Hall as an example. So it turns out Mom was pointing at buildings that
were behind the ones we could see: WAVE Quarters B, West Potomac Park
(but see note 6 below).
World War II: "Code girl" with Bombe in DC Navy Annex
And what were all these WAVES and sailors (like my mom and dad) doing there
throughout the war? Signals Intelligence. Military messages were
generally transmitted in ciphertext, i.e. encrypted. Some of the WAVES and
sailors worked in cryptography, encoding and decoding Navy messages as well
as trying to break the codes of Axis messages, such as U-boat and Japanese
Imperial Navy traffic. Others (like my mom and dad) sent and received Navy
messages, presumably encrypted, in Morse code. Nobody was allowed to talk
about this work, not even after the war, but the reason I know they weren't
codebreakers is that they were enlisted, not officers. To break Axis codes,
the cryptographers were aided by massive
"bombe" machines like the
one at left. Although originally the codebreakers worked in the Navy
building, by late 1942 the operation had outgrown the space so the Navy took
over the 38-acre campus of Mount
Vernon Seminary at 3801 Nebraska Avenue, about four miles NNW of the
Navy building, and it became the new top-secret Naval Communications Annex.
More about my Mom's Navy work here.
References
Mundy, Liza,
"Code
Girls - The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War
II", Hachette Books (2017). Chapter 6, "Q for Communications", is
about the WAVES codebreakers and the buildings they lived and worked in. My
Mom was not a code breaker but I believe she worked with them as receiver
and sender of encrypted messages.
WWII Women Cracking the Code, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum:
"A major part of the WAVES’ job was building and operating the Navy
Cryptanalytic Bombe, a 2.5 - ton electromechanical device developed to
break the four-rotor enigma messages from German U-boats. Six hundred WAVES
worked three eight-hour shifts, seven days a week at the National Cash
Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio, where they learned how to solder
and connect wires, read electrical diagrams, assemble rotors, and build 121
of these machines with no idea what they were building or why. It was
tiresome, tedious work that allowed no room for error. After the first
successful Bombe run in May 1943, the WAVES traveled with their Bombes by
rail back to the Navy Annex in Washington, DC, where they operated the machines through the end of the war."
East and West Potomac Park, National
Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination form for federal
properties, 30 Nov 1973: "In 1944, a complex containing three dormitories to
house 2,500 WAVES (Women Appointed to Voluntary Emergency Services), a
mess hall, an infirmary, and a recreation building, was constructed..."
Then where did Mom live in 1942 and 1943???