Cooking was her Second Career
When Julia Child died last week, her obituaries mentioned her wartime service in the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services), the predecessor of the C.I.A., or at least obliquely referred to her 'foreign service' during the war. While I'd been aware of this bit of trivia regarding Mrs. Child, I didn't know any of the details until I stumbled across this article:
The article is a fascinating read about an extraordinary woman (and practically begging for a screen play). A few highlights: denied entry to others services (such as the W.A.V.E.S) due to her great height, the then Julia McWilliams moved to Washington D.C. and landed a job typing names - some 10,000 in two months. Friends helped her find a job in the office of William J. "Wild Bill' Donovan, head of the O.S.S. and her burgeoning career in espionage was born. Along the way she journeyed to Australia, India, Ceylon and China - the last of these requiring a trip over 'the Hump,' the 15,000 peaks of the Himalayas, in an unpressurized C-54. Child's service in the Far East brought her into contact with Paul Child, the man she would marry following the war.
Though Julia would later say, modestly, "I was just a file clerk," she had a high security clearance for her work, which included all classified papers for the invasion of the Malaysian peninsula. She tracked sensitive documents, dispatches, and espionage/sabotage under the South East Asia Command, then headed by Mountbatten. A colleague in Air Force Intelligence, Byron Martin, stated that Julia "was privy to every top secret ... which required a person of unquestioned loyalty, of rock-solid integrity, of unblemished lifestyle, of keen intelligence." And Betty MacDonald McIntosh, who later wrote a book about the women of the OSS, Sisterhood of Spies (United States Naval Institute, 1998), reported, "Morale in her section could not be higher."
By April, when Julia arrived in Chongqing, Chiang's headquarters, there was talk of her being spy material, as she possessed the kind of native intelligence and derring-do necessary for risky assignments. Yet, the war was coming to an end. On May 9, 1945, Germany surrendered; on Aug. 6, the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
The article is a fascinating read about an extraordinary woman (and practically begging for a screen play). A few highlights: denied entry to others services (such as the W.A.V.E.S) due to her great height, the then Julia McWilliams moved to Washington D.C. and landed a job typing names - some 10,000 in two months. Friends helped her find a job in the office of William J. "Wild Bill' Donovan, head of the O.S.S. and her burgeoning career in espionage was born. Along the way she journeyed to Australia, India, Ceylon and China - the last of these requiring a trip over 'the Hump,' the 15,000 peaks of the Himalayas, in an unpressurized C-54. Child's service in the Far East brought her into contact with Paul Child, the man she would marry following the war.
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