Taught by the late Harvard professor Donald H. Menzel, the course was kept secret and offered only to a limited number of seniors and graduate students who met the necessary criteria.

"Bright, close-mouthed, native students are needed, and evidence of a flair for languages and mathematics would be advantageous," said the naval communications director in a letter to President Comstock, adding that "any intense, sociological quirks would, of course, be undesirable."

Students enrolled in the course were instructed not to utter the words "cryptanalysis," "intelligence" or "security" outside the classroom under any circumstances. They were also warned not to leak any information to the media.

During May 1942, both Harvard and Radcliffe offered fire-fighting courses supervised by the Cambridge Fire Department and instituted drills for entering and escaping shelter areas.

But despite the precautions, most graduates say they do not remember visibly increased campus security or concerns about bomb threats and air raids.

To complement the training sessions, representatives from Washington government agencies came to Cambridge to recruit Radcliffe students for jobs in the civilian sectors of the war effort.

"The offices of War Information and War Production all needed people," says one Radcliffe graduate. "It was the first time women had gone in such masses into that kind of work, because the men were fighting."

"There was a great rush to get into the services ... an urgency," recalls Cynthia Sortwell Castleman '42. "Everyone was pulling together."

At the time, women were expected to enter traditionally female-dominated professions, and Radcliffe career advisers were often reluctant to guide their young students toward work outside these spheres.

"The [Radcliffe] academic advisers would not help us unless we said we were going to become secretaries or teachers," said Crossley. "But because of the war, many girls were in and out of government."

Opening New Doors

And many Radcliffe graduates say the war opened jobs and future careers to women that would have been closed if they had been forced to compete with men for the positions.

"We were still at a very traditional time," says one member of the Class of '42. "The war had a very profound effect on the number of jobs for women."

Crossley, who worked in Washington for the Office of War Information, asserts that "The objective of life then [for women] was to raise children. But some of us went into war works and had different lives."

Wearing the Pants