Recruited by the U.S. Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than ten thousand women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of code-breaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

"By the time the United States joined the Second World War in 1941, the fight against Nazi and Axis powers had already been under way for two years. In order to win the war and protect its soldiers, the US Marines recruited twenty-nine Navajo men to create a secret code that could be used to send military messages quickly and safely across battlefields. Author James Buckley Jr. explains how these brave and intelligent men developed their amazing code,...

"Biography of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, an American woman who pioneered codebreaking in WWI and WWII but was only recently recognized for her extraordinary contributions to the field"--

"The entire vast, modern American intelligence system--the amalgam of three-letter spy services of many stripes--can be traced back to the dire straits the world faced at the dawn of World War II. Prior to 1940, the United States had no organization to recruit spies and steal secrets or launch covert campaigns against enemies overseas and just a few codebreakers, isolated in windowless vaults. It was only through Winston Churchill's determination...

"Cryptology was key to the success of the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. Learn more is this introduction the Navajo and why and how their language was well-suited to being used for coded messages."--

On his 81st birthday, without explanation, Karen Fisher-Alaniz's father placed two weathered notebooks on her lap. Inside were more than 400 pages of letters he'd written to his parents during WWII. She began reading them, and the more she read, the more she discovered about the man she never knew.

They began to meet for lunch every week, for her to ask him questions, and him to provide the answers. It was through this process that she discovered

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"The author's great-uncle John Bear King was a Sioux Indian in the First Cavalry in the Second World War. Her book follows seven Sioux who put aside a long history of prejudice against their people and joined the fight against Japan, using their native language as a secret code for the Americans. The Sioux and other tribal code-talking groups have historically taken a backseat to the Navajo Code Talkers, until a presidential act of recognition was...

"Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the conflict in Vietnam was much more than a battle between Vietnamese and American forces. Although the fighting may have taken place in monsoon-swept cities and booby-trapped jungles, the Vietnam War was fought on a much larger scale. Spies were active on all fronts, including within the United States itself. Readers will explore how technology and tactics not only shaped the Vietnam War, but changed the...

A brief look at the use of American Indian soldiers who used their native languages to communicate during World War II to prevent enemies from understanding what was being said.