the enemy country, either from a resistance movement or from disgruntled soldiers and civilians. In essence, black propaganda was a series of believable lies designed to cause the enemy soldiers to lose heart and ultimately surrender, but it was also aimed at occupied populations and soldiers captured for cheap labor, to encourage them to rise up against their oppressors and join the winning side.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDonovan, who had studied Nazi black propaganda, knew how effective these tactics could be. \u201cSubtly planned rumor and propaganda [can] subvert people from allegiance to their own country,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is essentially a weapon of exploitation, and if successful can be more effective than a shooting war.\u201d While officers in other departments refused to hire women, Donovan specifically searched them out when he began to staff his new MO branch, as he believed they would excel at creating subversive materials.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cGeneral Donovan believed that we could do things that the men couldn\u2019t,\u201d Betty said years later. \u201cWe were able to think of a lot of gossipy things to do for MO that men never would have thought of. I don\u2019t want to brag, but women can hurt people better, maybe, than men could think of. Women seemed to have a feeling for how to really fool people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n***<\/span><\/p>\nDonovan liked quirky people, and Betty, Zuzka, Jane, and Marlene definitely fit the bill. All had careers that were highly unusual for women in the 1930s and \u201940s, and they all yearned to escape the gender restrictions of the day that dictated they be mothers and wives, or teachers or nurses if they absolutely <\/span>had <\/span><\/i>to work. They all wanted more than their present lives provided, though they never lost sight of the fact that their efforts would have just one aim: to help win the war and bring American soldiers back home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTheir motivations for joining the OSS differed\u2014two wanted vengeance, two craved adventure\u2014and one served stateside while three headed overseas. But the one thing they shared in common was that all four were determined to serve their country in the best way they could: by using their brains.<\/span><\/p>\nEvery office and project in every theater was woefully understaffed, so the women quickly learned to multitask everything while happily taking advantage of the utter lack of supervision to call their own shots. While the women often turned to spies and agents for intel to help them craft their writings, they occasionally had to do the dirty work themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAnd because the work was so clandestine, when it came to paying contract workers and locals for their assignments, a little bit of creativity was in order: Betty became well practiced at slicing off the exact amount of opium to compensate a Burmese spy, while Zuzka paid a group of German POWs with an afternoon at a local Italian brothel.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe four women loved their jobs along with the autonomy they brought, while at the same time faced a boatload of challenges regardless of where they were serving. The women had to constantly fight for promotions and recognition, as well as deal with rampant sexism. Often, after her workday was done, Betty was called upon to serve coffee and sandwiches to her male coworkers, while Zuzka played cocktail waitress, serving drinks to male officers who she had brainstormed alongside just minutes before. But they took it in stride. As Zuzka put it, \u201c<\/span>Scheuklappen<\/span><\/i>, we were always reminded, German for blinders,\u201d she said. \u201cJust look straight ahead at what you\u2019re doing, and don\u2019t worry about what the other guys are doing.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe stakes were high: They knew that not every \u201cbelievable lie\u201d they made up worked out, and there was the hard truth that people died as a result of their brainstorms. \u201cI tried to push it out of my head,\u201d said Betty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe women also faced constant danger, and their own lives were often at risk: Betty worked in India and behind enemy lines in China, where a sizable contingent of locals didn\u2019t want the Americans interfering in their affairs. Zuzka regularly interrogated German POWs who could snuff out her life with one well-aimed finger to the throat. And Hitler had placed a bounty on Marlene\u2019s capture from the moment she became a US citizen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut if one more leaflet, radio broadcast, or well-turned phrase would cause just one German soldier to feel that maybe Hitler wasn\u2019t worth fighting for any longer, well then it was worth the twelve-hour days, giant bugs, lousy food, and living in tents thousands of miles from home.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe women were extremely productive over the roughly eighteen months they worked for the OSS, cranking out hundreds of articles, letters, leaflets, and radio scripts. They even intercepted postcards and letters from enemy soldiers, erasing any positive messages and instead adding news of starvation and lost battles to dishearten family back home. The women had to take particular care to make sure each piece would \u201cpass,\u201d that civilians and troops would believe it came from a resister or disgruntled soldier from within their own country. If there were any doubts, Allied soldiers could be at risk.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen the women who would become known as Donovan\u2019s Dreamers first came on board, Donovan gave them some plum advice, words that none of the women had heard before:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cIf you think it will work, go ahead.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFor these unconventional women, planting victory gardens, wrapping bandages, and buying war bonds wasn\u2019t going to cut it. Wild Bill was happy to help. He needed highly intelligent and creative women who could think on their feet, were fluent in at least one foreign language, and could hit the ground running.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn Betty MacDonald (later McIntosh), Barbara \u201cZuzka\u201d Lauwers, Jane Smith-Hutton, and Marlene Dietrich, he had found four of the best.<\/span><\/p>\nAct One\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Going to War<\/b><\/p>\n
Chapter 1\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nBetty<\/span><\/em><\/p>\nFor Elizabeth \u201cBetty\u201d MacDonald, the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, dawned like most days on the island of Oahu: sheer paradise. Warm and sunny with a light westerly breeze passing through the windows of the home in the mountains in Koko Head that she shared with her husband, Alex. The couple\u2019s small, neat house overlooked a lagoon, and was just ten miles away from downtown, where they both worked as newspaper reporters.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBetty loved her job as society and women\u2019s editor at the <\/span>Honolulu Star-Bulletin<\/span><\/i>, but her beat presented her with a nonstop soft-news cycle of luncheons, parades, and church fairs. At dinner each night, she listened to Alex\u2019s tales of crime and corruption as a police reporter at the <\/span>Honolulu Advertiser<\/span><\/i> with barely concealed envy. She yearned for stories she could sink her teeth into, and regularly pestered her editor to switch her to the city desk, but he always said it was no place for a woman.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTo compensate for the lack of a real challenge in her day job, she threw herself into studying Asian culture. Earlier in the year, she had traveled on an army transport to the Philippines for a series of stories for the paper, and she wanted to do more. Betty and Alex had lived with a Japanese family a couple of years earlier so they could become fluent in the language and customs.<\/span><\/p>\nThis morning, she woke just after eight o\u2019clock and decided to let her husband sleep in; they\u2019d been to a party the night before and Alex was a bit hungover. Betty switched on the radio to listen to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir while she waited for the coffee to percolate. Just as she was taking her first sip, a harsh buzz interrupted the mellifluous tones of the singers.<\/span><\/p>\nAnother drill, Betty thought. Like other Oahu residents, she was long accustomed to the regular emergency alerts that were broadcast over the radio due to proximity to the naval base and Hickam Air Field at Pearl Harbor. The alerts had become so frequent that most residents tuned them out, and indeed, a couple of minutes later, the choir returned to their hymns just as Betty poured more coffee. But then the phone jangled, and she picked up after the first ring to avoid waking Alex.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSomething\u2019s happened down at Hickam,\u201d her photographer Allen \u201cHump\u201d Campbell blurted out, skipping his usual pleasantries. \u201cWe need to get down to the base <\/span>now<\/span><\/i>.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNews of the war in Europe and in the Pacific appeared regularly in the paper, but many citizens tuned it out. After all, the various battles and skirmishes were thousands of miles away. Besides, many residents of Hawaii\u2014at the time a US territory, not a full-fledged state\u2014had already lived through the destruction of World War I and had become isolationists as a result, against war at any cost.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nBut Betty had recently covered stories about troop movements in and out of Oahu on their way to other parts of the world, so she knew something was brewing. Even she, though, had no way to predict the enormity of what was to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe gulped her coffee past the lump in her throat, but in addition to fear, she had to admit that she felt something else: a frisson of excitement. Maybe now I\u2019ll get to cover something more than flower shows and society luncheons, she thought.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs soon as she hung up, the phone rang again. This time it was Alex\u2019s editor with the same message: Get down here <\/span>now<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe shook her husband awake and poured him a coffee. He threw on some clothes, and after a quick kiss, he ran out the door. As a police reporter, Alex was waved through police lines and yellowtaped crime scenes, but Betty needed a male escort to gain access to anything more than the usual ladies\u2019 social events that she covered, and women were never allowed onto the military bases, escort or not. She downed the rest of her coffee while she waited for Hump to show up, and that\u2019s when she first heard it, a low rumble coming from the west. She switched off the radio and heard it again, louder this time: a boom followed by several muffled explosions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA bomb.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHump pulled up to the house a few minutes later, slowing down just enough for Betty to yank open the door and hop in. As they raced toward the harbor, they passed people walking their dogs and others heading to church. Palm trees lining the roads swayed in the light breeze. Just another Sunday morning on Oahu. Betty\u2019s mind started playing tricks on her. Had she imagined the explosions? Maybe it was a drill after all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe relaxed slightly, but then she saw the birds. At first, a few small, feathered bodies peppered the sidewalk, mostly doves and sparrows. They looked peaceful, as if they were napping. A few short blocks later, tiny corpses covered the asphalt, their feathers ruffled and askew. Hump\u2019s jaw clenched as he swerved to avoid the birds, mostly unsuccessfully.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe concussion of the bombing had killed them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis was no drill.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nAs their car crested the hill near the Punchbowl neighborhood, the ocean came into view. Betty never tired of the sight of Pearl Harbor and the sugarcane fields sprawled out in the distance. But now she only saw thick columns of smoke billowing up into the sky from the harbor. The water looked like it was on fire.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA few small fighter planes loop-de-looped in graceful arcs overhead. Betty craned her head outside the window. The insignia on the side of the plane was a red circle, the symbol of Japan, land of the rising sun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSuddenly, there was a sharp whistling sound, almost over my shoulder, and I saw a rooftop fly into the air like a pasteboard movie set,\u201d she remembered years later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe watched as the planes turned toward the harbor, where they paused momentarily in midair before plunging straight down into the ocean.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cFor the first time, I felt that numb terror that all of London has known for months, of not being able to do anything but fall on your stomach and hope the bomb won\u2019t land on you,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s the terror of sudden visions of a ripping sensation in your back, shrapnel coursing through your chest, total blackness, maybe death.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe war had finally come to America.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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