Eloise Marshall and Phillip Clayton first came to life in my imagination. But their nemesis in the story, Velvalee Dickinson, definitely was not!
Velvalee has the distinction of being named WWII’s “Number One Woman Spy” by the FBI who also gave her the nickname of “The Doll Woman.”
When Velvalee was arrested, she was charged with espionage and faced the death penalty. In the end, though, she pled guilty to censorship violations and only served seven years of her sentence.
Velvalee Malvena Blucher was born and raised in California. Both her parents died when she was a young adult. Her mother died from tuberculosis. Four years later, her father was crushed beneath the wheel of a car. Lee Dickinson was her employer–he owned a brokerage firm catering to a Japanese clientele–before he became her third husband. They joined the Japanese-American Society and were part of a social circle that included Japanese diplomats and government officials.
In 1937, they moved from California to New York. Velvalee, already a doll collector, opened a doll shop on Madison Avenue in 1941. A skilled marketer, she created brochures that she mailed to a growing list that included both U.S. and international customers. She spoke at events catering to doll collectors and wrote articles for magazines on the topic. She was a respected voice in the “doll world,” but she also had a secret.
Velvalee maintained her social connections with Japanese officials, including the Japanese Consul General and Ichiro Yokoyama, the Japanese Naval Attache from Washington DC. Her loyalty was to the country who, on December 7, 1941–that day of infamy, attacked Pearl Harbor.
During the first half of 1942, Velvalee and Lee traveled to the west coast. Velvalee gathered information–seemingly by striking up conversations with the “right” people and visiting shipyards–on how much damage the bombing had caused to our ships, their repairs, and when they’d be battle-ready again.
She passed this information to the Japanese by typing letters at on typewriters at the hotels where she was staying and also on her own typewriter when she returned to New York. However, she forged the signatures of her customers on these letters and used these same customers’ home addresses as the return addresses. The letters were then mailed to addresses in Buenos Aires.
In the letters, she used jargon code so that the letters seemed to be about dolls. In reality, they were about the ships. For example, Velvalee wrote the following (the odd capitalization and misspellings are in the original):
You wrote me that you had sent a letter to Mr. Shaw, well I want to see MR. SHAW he distroyed Your letter, you know he has been Ill. His car was damaged but is being repaired now. I saw a few of his family about. They all say Mr. Shaw will be back to work soon.
FBI codebreakers determined this was a reference to the U.S.S. Shaw, a navy destroyer (distroyed Your) that had been repaired enough at Pearl Harbor to make it to San Francisco where it was outfitted with a new bow. Once repairs were complete, it returned to battle.
Five of the letters with the forged signatures of four individuals, all customers of Velvalee, ended up with the FBI after they were marked “address unknown” and “return to sender.” The investigation included interviewing these four women, tracing Lee and Velvalee’s 1942 trip, and finding the typewriters used to write the letters.
Lee died in 1943, leaving Velvalee with a scapegoat. When she was arrested on January 21, 1944, she at first blamed Lee. She was charged with espionage and faced the death penalty but eventually pleaded guilty to censorship violations. She served seven years and changed her name to Catherine Dickinson.
I post a historical blog on the Heroes, Heroines, & History website on the 14th of each month. My recent posts have been about topics I researched for The Cryptographer’s Dilemma.
The first two feature Velvalee Dickinson:
“The Doll Woman ~ A World War II Traitor”
“World War II’s ‘Number One Woman Spy'”
Phillip and Eloise visit several FBI field offices on their cross-country trek: “FBI Field Offices ~ A Brief History of a Select Few”
Elizebeth Smith Friedman is “America’s First Female Cryptanalyst.”
Her role both in breaking our enemies’ codes and in developing cryptographic protocols was classified for too many years. PBS spotlights her long-overlooked contributions in an episode of their show, American Experience, called “The Codebreaker” (Season 33, Episode 1). I purchased the episode on Amazon Prime (only $4.99 at that time!) and highly recommend it.
I’ll be posting more behind-the-scenes info in the weeks to come so be sure to check back soon!
