My Great Aunt Evie

The following is an article written about my Great Aunt Evie who is such a special person to me. She has had a very interesting life, this just scratches the surface. She is pictured here with my Grandfather.


Osawatomie native Evelyn Slayman, who served as a military code-breaker during World War II, poses with her brother, John, who was drafted to fight in the conflict. (Photo by Dustin Kass)

From Secretary to Code Breaker, Slayman Embraces Secret Life
By Dustin Kass, dustinKass@miconews.com

For decades, Evelyn Slayman never talked about exactly what she did while serving during World War II. The Osawatomie native never chatted during the war with her roommate, a fellow Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service from Connecticut who worked on secretive activities as well.Evelyn never told her mom exactly what she was doing during her time in Washington, D.C., telling her only she was doing “something like shorthand, only a different kind of shorthand.”

A commendation she earned for her service even came with a note reading, in part, “because of the nature of service provided,” the U.S. Navy requested “no publicity be given upon your receipt” of the honor.It wasn’t until she ran across a book about 20 years ago, 40-plus years after serving, that Evelyn finally opened up about what she did.

After decades in silence, she finally talked about the three years she spent in Washington, helping break the Japanese code during the war.Evelyn was born and raised in Osawatomie, the second of three children born to Catholic parents. Following her high school graduation in 1936, she took a year of secretarial training. She held several different positions before landing a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Then war struck. Evelyn’s brother, John, was drafted, chosen to serve despite having a wife and young child at home. The situation did not sit well with Evelyn, but it also spurred her own involvement.“I thought it was so wrong for him to have to go,” Evelyn said. “But that’s why I decided to go into the Navy. I wanted to help my country.”

Evelyn, just 23 years old, enlisted and soon spent 30 days training in Stillwater, Okla., before traveling to serve in Washington. With her strong secretarial background, she envisioned herself serving as a secretary to an admiral or other high-ranking officer. Instead, Evelyn spent the next three years doing something far more crucial: helping crack Japanese military codes. It was an important job, even if the task wasn’t particularly exciting or glamorous.“It was boring as hell,” Evelyn said. “Here I was doing stuff every day that an 8-year-old could do.”Evelyn and other WAVES worked eight-hour shifts in a building just across the street from the barracks where they lived. Grouped eight women to a table, Evelyn spent six days a week taking papers with five-letter groupings on them and matching up a number with each letter, using the code given at the bottom of each sheet.

As time went on, Evelyn sometimes noticed the names of Pacific islands or other locations in the codes. Even then, though, secrecy was paramount, and she didn’t share the information with any of her coworkers. She instead watched the newspaper to see if the location was mentioned in a battle.“Sometimes, you’d think, ‘We may have helped capture that town,’” she said.Evelyn and the other WAVES didn’t spend all of their time working, taking advantage of living in Washington. They would go to the movies and spend days off shopping. Evelyn and her friend, Ruthie, also particularly liked going dancing.

One night, the pair decided to attend a dance sponsored by elected officials from Missouri. At one point in the night, those gathered started doing a dance called the Paul Jones, where the women form a small circle in the middle of the dance floor, and the men formed a larger circle around them. Both circles move in opposite directions, and, on cue, the men pair up with the women standing before them.At one of the stopping points, Evelyn found herself facing a man a little shorter than her who looked familiar somehow.

After a few moments, she realized her next dance partner was Harry Truman, the Missouri native who was the vice president at the time. When Evelyn describes this brush with history, however, she doesn’t have much good to say about Truman’s efforts on the dance floor that night.“He was a terrible dancer,” Evelyn said, springing to her feet to demonstrate.“I was a pretty good dancer,” she continued, the spry 90-year-old looking into the middle distance as she held an imaginary, and apparently very clumsy, partner. “He had no rhythm in his body whatsoever. I was happy when our turn was over.”It just one of many experiences she treasures from her time in the service. Those experiences still resonate to this day.“I’ve been thankful so many, many times for being able to do it,” Evelyn said.