Datian 1 — The late WAVE veteran Arpeni “Penny” Mirigian (1922 – 2019) holds a photograph of herself in the service at age 22. She was placed in a unit to record Japanese codes. JOHN WALKER, THE FRESNO BEE

‘Uncovering a Veil of Secrecy’

June 12, 2025

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(Fresno’s Mary Ekmalian is the current Home Guild President at the California Armenian Home. Here are excerpts of a story from April 19, 2009 published in The Fresno Bee, written by Paula Lloyd and Vanessa Colon, about Arpeni “Penny” Mirigian, Mary’s mother, who helped protect our country during World War II.)

FRESNO — For 50 years, Arpeni “Penny” Mirigian kept the secret about what she really did in the Navy WAVES during World War II. When people asked, she simply said: “I was a radio operator.” “Spy” would have been closer to the truth. From 1943 to 1945, Mirigian was part of an elite group of “intercept operators” who typed up Japanese radio broadcasts to be decoded. The work was top secret. “It was highly classified,” she said. “They drilled into us that we were doing highly secret work, and we couldn’t tell anyone – including when you wrote to your parents.”

The Fresno woman was one of just a few still around to tell their stories. “They were told if they divulged what they were doing, even though they were women, they’d be shot,” said John Gustafson, membership secretary of the U.S. Naval Cryptologic Veterans Association in Pensacola, Florida. “Some still won’t talk about it.” So Mirigian kept quiet. She got married. She had four children. She divorced and – much later – she married again. She taught English at Edison High School for 23 years before retiring. Through it all, nobody knew that she once had lived a very different life. Yet she never forgot about the war, or the four close friends she made in the WAVES – or the blue uniform in her closet that still fits as well as it did five decades ago.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the WAVES – Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services – in 1942. The WAVES made up about 2.5% of the Navy’s personnel by the end of the war, according to records from the Naval Historical Center at the Department of the Navy. Women served in a variety of duties, from medical to intelligence. About 4,000 WAVES were intercept operators during World War II, Gustafson said. “By putting women in there, it freed up the men to go overseas,” he said.

Mirigian enlisted in 1943, three months before she was to graduate from then Fresno State College. She was attracted by the uniform — a cute blue with white gloves. The Army’s was a khaki color. It just looked terrible,” Mirigian said. “You’re a woman. You want to look nice.” In November 1943, she boarded a troop train in Fowler. “I was so proud and excited,” she said. “It was an adventure. I was never on a train.”

She rode the train for three days to her boot camp at Hunter College in New York. After six weeks of basic training, she was assigned to Bainbridge Island in Washington. Until then, Mirigian, 21, had never lived away from home. Her task was to listen to Japanese radio broadcasts being made in Morse Code. She sat in a room full of typewriters with headphones on for eight-hour shifts. The intercept operators also included Navy sailors.

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“You were just listening to dots and dashes,” Mirigian said. “When we would hear it, we would type it on a code typewriter.” What the operators typed didn’t make any sense to them. “Transcribed messages were given to the code breakers to unravel, but the operators weren’t told what the messages meant. The five-letter grouping Mirigian recalled, although random, was typical of the Japanese,” Gustafson said. “Japan used several codes to communicate different information — for weather, the location of merchant marine ships and the Japanese Navy. It took months to break one of Japan’s codes,” Gustafson said, “but the American military broke most of them.”

Mirigian became close friends with four other WAVES living in tight quarters in the barrack. On their time off, the friends went bowling, out to eat or to a movie on the base. But they never talked about work. When the war ended, the women exchanged addresses, but they didn’t contact each other.

The Navy began declassifying information on the intercept operators’ work in the early 1980’s, Gustafson said. Before then, the federal government didn’t require any war information to be declassified, he said, “so it would just sit there as classified information.”

Mirigian didn’t learn about the declassification until 1996, when she read about it in a Navy newsletter. “In a sense, I was relieved,” Mirigian said. It had been a hard secret to keep, especially if someone made fun of women’s service in World War II. “But I had to rise above it,” she said. “I was sworn to secrecy, and if you start talking, you never know what you’re going to say.”

When she finally could talk, the first people she told were her parents. Mirigian’s family and friends were shocked when they heard the truth about her Navy assignment. “I knew she went into the service – that was the talk of the town,” said Milton Torigian, who grew up with Mirigian in Fowler and has been a CPA for many years. “I just thought she was a clerk.”

The next thing Mirigian did was to contact “the girls” – the four friends she hadn’t seen or talked to in 50 years. They made plans to meet at a Navy veterans’ reunion in Seattle. “When we found each other, we were squealing like young, silly girls,” Mirigian said. They caught up with each other’s lives and they’ve been in touch ever since. Mirigian also finally let her husband in on the truth. She had married former Fowler High classmate George Emerzian in 1989 at their 50th high school reunion. When he learned about his wife’s secret past, Emerzian was impressed. “I thought there weren’t too many women who could have done that kind of work,” he said.

The Armenian Mirror-Spectator

Topics: Navy WAVES, Purslane, World War II

People: Arpeni Mirigian, Mary Ekmalian

A Letter from Los Angeles

Note: Arpeni “Penny” Mirigian passed away on May 3, 2019 in Fresno at the age of 97, and was buried with military honors at the Ararat Armenian Cemetery on June 29, 2019. For her distinctive service she received the American Campaign and World War II Victory Medals. For more information on Penny Mirigian’s military service and other Armenian-American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam Heroes, go to Richard N. Demirjian’s 2003 book The Faces of Courage. The Armenian Cultural Conservancy has a copy available for ACC members to check out. Arpeni was a well-known and respected figure in the Armenian community through her active involvement with the Armenian-American Citizens’ League, the Armenian Community School, the California Armenian Home, and the Holy Trinity Armenian Apostolic Church.

Mary Boyajian Mirigian’s Purslane Dinner

“Pepper Abour, purslane is a yellow-flowered species of the genus portulaca, which is widely spread in the world. It is used in salads or can be cooked,” said Penny Mirigian. “Purslane has a fresh, slightly salty and tart taste, often described as similar to spinach, watercress, or even a lemony cucumber. It’s crunchy, juicy, and some find it a bit slimy. The leaves of stems are thick and succulent. It is also considered a pot herb. Purslane is tasty to eat either fresh, cooked or frozen. This is an excellent old-world recipe consisting of healthy grains, vegetables and meats.”

“This recipe was made by my paternal grandmother, Kohar Derosian Mirigian, without measurements. My talented mother, Mary Boyajian Mirigian, perfected the recipe, which I use. I often cook with purslane. This purslane dish can be frozen after it is cooked and will retain its flavor and texture after thawing. Mary Boyajian Mirigian was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1902, the daughter of Krikor and Elizabeth Boyajian. As a child she and her family moved to the town of Fowler, California, known for its grape vineyards and expansive farm land. In 1920, Mary married Mesrob K. Mirigian in Fresno. She and her husband were founding members of the Armenian-American Citizens’ League. As a charter member of the Armenian-American Citizens’ League, Mary was active in the California Armenian Home Guild, American Legion Auxiliary, Fresno County Farm Bureau Women, and St. Gregory Senior Ladies Society.”

Ingredients:

4 cups coarsely chopped purslane, cleaned and washed

1/2 cup hulled whole wheat berries (dzedzadz)

1 cup white navy beans

2 cups red lentils

2 (15 oz.) cans garbanzo beans

Several cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 cube butter

2 cups white onions, chopped and sautéed

Salt, pepper and cayenne pepper to taste

Preparation:

The day before, wash and prepare the purslane. Soak the whole wheat and beans separately overnight. The next day, cook the beans and whole wheat separately. (Separately because they cook differently; also cook the whole wheat in a large vessel that you can use for the rest of the cooking process.) Next, bring a pan of water to boiling and drop the purslane into it until the purslane changes color. Remove; rinse in cold water and drain. Cook lentils in water; keep adding water as necessary until the lentils are pink or yellowish white for some lentils. The more lentils, the better the taste. Garbanzo beans are usually left whole, but they can be put through the blender or mashed like potatoes.

Keep the liquid from the cans. In a large cooking vessel, put 1/2 of the purslane on top of the navy beans and whole wheat. Then put the lentils over the purslane and cover the lentils with the rest of the purslane. Bring to boiling. When ready to stir, add the garbanzo and garlic. Keep stirring while cooking. Add the cube of butter, which will melt while cooking. Add liquid as necessary. (Vegetable juices, meat juices kept for such cooking, or water). Let mixture come to a slow boil, stirring to blend flavors. Add the spices during this time. Add the sautéed onion when cooking is nearly done. This dish can be served hot as a main entrée or eaten cold as a dip with lavash. The final volume will be close to 1 gallon. Eat it hot; enjoy it cold; freeze it for later use.

Note: Purslane is often found at farmers’ markets, Asian and Middle Eastern grocery stores and even in your garden if you live in a warm climate like Fresno. Younger, more tender leaves are preferred. Purslane is high in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins A and C, and minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron, and potassium. Don’t have purslane? Substitute it with herbs like watercress, sorrel, mustard greens, or spinach if it’s for a salad or cooked dish. If it’s for a stew or another dish where it’s being used to thicken the food, try okra, file powder, or Malabar spinach.

Purslane, also known as pursley, pigweed, verdolaga, regelah portulaca paruppu keerai, luni bhaji, purslane is in fact a weed.

For purslane recipes, see:

https://flavorsofthesun.blogspot.com/2008/01/purslane-weed-culinary-star-and-cure_27.html

https://tasteofsouthsudan.com/recipes/everyday-meals/rijla-purslane-red-lentils-stew/

Also see:

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/waves-us-navy

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/waves-program-color-world-war-2

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/waves-united-states-naval-women-s-reserve.htm

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/community/clovis-news/article19505376.html

https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/central-valley/article3240628.html

This recipe was published in A Harvest of Recipes Cookbook from The Pilgrim Armenian Congregational Church in Fresno. See pages 72-73.