by Lorielle Blackwell
PROMOTIONS STAFF WRITER May 26, 2002Monday is Memorial
Day, a time to honor those who died in the service of our country. To many people,
especially the thousands of veterans, Memorial Day, this day, which has a history dating
back to the Civil War, is a reminder of their own experiences and the friends they served
with who didn't return.
Opal Coleman of Beebe, like most veterans of World War II, doesn't
believe she did much.
"I was never stationed overseas, saw combat or did anything like
that," she said.
Instead, Coleman remained stateside, breaking barriers and Japanese
codes as part of the Women's Army Corps of the Signal Security Agency.
On May 27, 1942, for the first time in history, the U.S. Army began
recruiting women.
"The recruiters for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps came to the
Ford, Bacon and Davis munitions plant, where I was working at the time making detonators,
and they were looking for women to join and become bakers, cooks and radio
operators," Coleman said. "Well, I never did care much for cooking and baking,
nut being a radio operator sounded interesting, si I thought I might give it a try."
Coleman told her parents of her plans to join, to which her mother was horrified that she
might be stationed overseas, but he father was supportive of the idea.
"My brother was already stationed overseas and he wrote my
mother a letter telling her about the war and that he hadn't had a bath in a month,"
Coleman said. "I think she worried more about him going so long without a bath more
than she worried about him getting shot. The thought of me going through an ordeal like
that was too much for my mother."
Gradually, her mother came to terms with the idea once she
realized the WAACs would not be stationed overseas.
Soon, Coleman was on her way to Daytona Beach, Fla., for basic
training and she and other women in her platoon stayed at the Riviera, a resort hotel on
the ocean which had been leased by the Army.
"I loved all the different sounds of the bugle calls," Coleman
said. "That was before I knew what they each meant. I soon hated them."
Even more than the bugle calls, Coleman hated one Army task: Kitchen
Patrol duty.
"I would hide under the barracks with a book to stay out of the way
so I wouldn't get KP duty,"
Coleman said. "Once your tasks were done, if you were caught just standing around you
got duty. Sometimes I would read all morning under there."
Army life proved a different experience for Coleman, who was born in Oil
Trough and raised in Ward.
"It wasn't the kind of environment I was used to,
Coleman said. "I hadn't heard some of the words I heard before joining, even
from men, and then heard them all frequently after from women. I had one girlfriend who
could cuss and make a sailor blush. I wasn't used to life like that."
Coleman, who today has been a member of the Church of
Christ for more than 60 years, didn't change during her Army days.
"I didn't drink and sleep around like some of the
girls did," she said. "I just wasn't about that. I did smoke, which I am ashamed
to admit, but the other stuff wasn't for me."
After basic training, Coleman, a T-5 corporal, was
sent to radio school in Holidaysburg, Pa., where she learned Morse Code and used
handcranked generators to produce power for sending messages.
"We would turn and turn until it felt like our
arms were going to falloff," Coleman said. "You'd wear yourself out on those
things. Morse Code is a pattern or group of dots and dashes that make up the alphabet and
numerical system. We were then sent to Ft. Oglethorpe, Ga., for additional training and I
got to see Bob Hope at the USOI show."
The Women's Army Auixiliary Corps was a success and
the Army received more requests for the WAACs than it could provide. However, one problem
persisted. Although they were desperately needed overseas, women, as auxiliaries, had no
military status, therefore, the Ariny could not offer them protection if captured or
benefits if injured.
The problem was solved in 1943 when President Roosevelt signed a bill
terminating the WAAC and establishing
the Women's Ariny Corps as an offirial branch of the Ariny.
Coleman served with the WAC company of the Second Signal Service
Battalion (2nd SSB).
The WAC radio intercept operators were an elite group, carefully chosen
and painstakingly trained. Of the first 800 WAC soldiers initially authorized by the SSA,
one-third were radio intercept operators.
Coleman soon found herself on a five-day train ride to Two Rock Ranch, a training school
for WAC radio intercept operators. Two
Rock Ranch was about 10 miles east of the Pafific ocean, built on what had been seven
small sheep ranches, approximately 12 miles west of Petaluma. Two Rock's ranchlike
appearance disguised its primary mission of intercepting Japanese Telegraph Code.
The WACs assigned to Two
Rock Ranch Station endured five days on a train from Camp Crowder to San Francisco.
"Our jobs were so secret that even our commanding officers didn't
know what we did," Cole- man said. "We couldn't talk about it to anyone. That
continued even after we were discharged and came home. It wasn't until long after the war
was over and everything was declassified that we could talk about it."
The Signal Security Agency had allotted the 2nd SSB 100 people to Two
Rock Station, Mo. Men and women worked side by side on shifts which were referred to as
"tricks." Each trick was eight hours and rotated, so operators shared working
days, evening or "mids", from mid- night to 8 a.m. Usually after working three
day, evening and midnight shifts, the operators had three days off-duty.
They tuned their intercept receivers and copied traffic directly
"off the air" using typewriters with all capital letters called
"mills."
Interceptors copied several letters, or a group of patterns,
behind the speed at which they were writing or typing.
A good intercept operator learned to record several signal groups in
her mind while writing the groups sent previously or already verbalized. The speeds would
increase rapidly and the WACs would rely on tapes where the transmissions would record the
messages. Coleman said tapes made it possible to slow the speed down and read back and
transcribe the messages.
Coleman also indicated that the living conditions left plenty to be
desired. "We had to share
a mess hall with the men, who couldn't cook and it was dirty;" Coleman said.
"I'd hang my jacket up and eat and when I would pick my jacket up, the cockroaches
would be running down the sleeves. We griped enough until we got our own mess hall."
The radio operators first mastered Kana Morse, the Japanese version of
Morse Code. Based on Katakana, one of several forms of the written Japanese language,
Kaiia Morse required learning 71 symbols, as opposed to the 26-letter alphabet of
International Morse Code.
 Opal
Coleman displays medals awarded to her during her military service as a radio intercept
operator
The Japanese also removed numbers of the Morse Code, making new
combinations and groupings.
"I can still hear the dit-dit-dah of the messages," Coleman
said. "It was hours and hours of hearing it. We looked forward to our breaks to keep
from going dit happy."
Weather reports also provided valuable information because the Japanese
broadcast the atmospheric conditions over Allied-occupied regions several hours in advance
of a planned air raid.
"Weather reports didn't seem important at first," Coleman
said, "But we learned that the weather could reveal enemy intentions and if they
planned an air raid on an area where our troops were, they needed to be prepared."
Signal Intelligence played a crucial role in the success of General
MacArthur's island- hopping strategy: WAC intercept operators followed each victory from
their stations, knowing that when one island after another changed to International Morse
Code, victory was imminent.
"I wouldn't have traded my experiences in the
Army anything," Coleman said. "I enjoyed it while I was in it, but knowing what
I do now, I don't know if I would do it again." |
Three
Rivers Edition