Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne (FRUMEL) operated from the Monterey apartments between 1942 and late 1944. FRUMEL played a significant role in the Allied victories in the Pacific, including the battle of Midway (June 1942).
Most of those who worked in rotating shifts at Monterey were women. Decoder Jessie Flanders recalled her experience:
On our very first day there, we had to swear on the Bible we wouldn’t tell another soul what we were doing — not our families, no one, ever.
It was quite a buzz when you intercepted something you knew was important — we’d rush the message to command who would fully decipher it and work out what was going on … If we missed an important code, sailors would die.
I distinctly recall one night … I deciphered a code which said ‘attack’. I ran as fast as I could into the command office and told them the Japanese were going to attack an Allied convoy sailing up the east coast of Borneo … We managed to alert our officers and they changed course in time. We felt very happy about that — we definitely saved lives that night and it felt really good to have contributed to something so significant.
