A few months after graduating from Winthrop, Jeuel Bannister Esmacher ’44 received a mysterious letter from the U.S. Department of Defense.


She was working in King’s Mountain, North Carolina, as the state’s first female high school band director. Te letter said: “We can use your services in Washington, D.C.”


• “Code Girls,” published in 2017, tells the story of World War II code breakers.


• Jeuel Bannister Esmacher was recruited by the Department of Defense.


• The book examined the secret work that the women performed during World War II.


At the time, World War II was raging on multiple fronts and Americans united with a sense of community and patriotism. Esmacher recalled: “When the government asked you to do something to help, you said ‘yes.’” With the blessing of her parents, the 19-year-old Starr native headed to the nation’s capital.


All Esmacher told her relatives was that she was going to work with the Department of Defense, because even she did not know what she would be doing. In fact, the work that she and others performed was not disclosed until the recent publication of the New York


from English. Many women took their code-breaking experiences to their graves.


Mundy, who interviewed Esmacher and named her several times in “Code Girls,” said that the women who worked as code breakers needed intelligence, persistence, grit and loyalty to do their work. She concluded that the military’s decision to tap well-educated women was a chief reason that America was able to build an effective code-breaking operation very quickly.


Esmacher believed that the Department of Defense contacted her because she had taken every course in cryptanalysis that the Army offered on Winthrop’s campus. Tose courses, in conjunction with her music major from Winthrop, made her an ideal candidate for service.


Now retired from banking and living in Anderson, the 95-year-old remembers those times — and the challenging work — very clearly. “It was tedious work,” Esmacher recalled, “I would get to the point where my mind would freeze, and I’d have to take a walk around our building in Arlington to clear my thoughts. I’d have to put aside a problem before I could go back and solve it.”


JEUEL


BANNISTER ESMACHER TODAY


CODE BREAKER’S EFFORTS


8 RECOGNIZED


Times bestselling book, “Code Girls: Te Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II,” by Liza Mundy.


Esmacher was one of many college-educated women tapped for this war effort, and was among 38 World War II code breakers who graduated from Winthrop. With American men signed up to fight, the U.S. Army and Navy turned to women who had an affinity for puzzles, math and music, and trained them to look for patterns within enemy messages intercepted by U.S. military intelligence. Te women were sworn to secrecy as they worked to decode in languages, such as Japanese and Russian, whose alphabets differ


When the war ended and thousands crossed the river from Arlington to D.C. to celebrate, Esmacher met her future husband for the first time. He was among a group of translators, linking arms and singing to rejoice. She lovingly refers to that well-known V-J Day as “Victory for Jeuel” Day.


Esmacher is credited with intercepting a message that later led to the sinking of a Japanese warship in the Pacific. When she first heard of the sinking, she was pleased to know that she had a part in saving Allied soldiers’ lives. However, after she had her own family, she remembered the event and empathized with the Japanese families who had lost their loved ones on that ship. Esmacher spent six years decoding because after World War II, she was among a smaller group of code breakers asked to work on intercepted Russian messages.


For her service to her country and to her alma mater, Esmacher will receive the Mary Mildred Sullivan Award when she returns to campus for her 75th college reunion during Homecoming and Reunion weekend. She continues to be an ambassador for Winthrop, telling others how her Winthrop education influenced her life.


9


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13