Elizabeth "Betty" Hyatt Caccavale (1923-2016), of Walnut Grove, South Carolina, served in the United States Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) from February 1943 to May 1945.
Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries (Repository)
Only a part of this collection has been digitized.
18 June 1999 oral history transcript; Newpaper article photocopy from the Brevard Times Newspaper written in October 2000 detailing Betty's work as a WAVES cryptographer and a captured Japanese Code book she helped decode and the lives that were saved as a result; photographs of Betty and her husband on her wedding day and while at dinner, 1945; copies of military discharge paperwork and meritorious award document; photocopies of various newspaper articles from 1943-1945, 1994.
Elizabeth "Betty" Hyatt Caccavale (1923-2016), of Walnut Grove, South Carolina, served as a cryptographer in the United States Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) from February 1943 to May 1945. Elizabeth 'Betty' Hyatt Caccavale was born in Walnut Grove, South Carolina, on 6 January 1923. She graduated from Spartanburg High School in 1940, and then worked as a secretarial assistant at two insurance businesses. Caccavale joined the WAVES in February 1943. She attended basic training at Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then was assigned to Washington, D.C., to decode Japanese naval communications at the Naval Intelligence Office. She married Philip Caccavale in February 1945 and left the service in May 1945. The Caccavales moved to New York, where Betty worked on Wall Street and her husband started a fuel business. They had two children, and after they were grown, Betty attended Queens College in Queens, New York.
Women's History Military
Navy -- WAVES
World War II era (1940-1946)
World War, 1939-1945 United States. Navy--Women
Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
