Thousands of women spent the early 1940s working in government offices in Washington, DC, getting vital information into the right hands to keep the war machine running.

Meet Mary Lou Kerst (married name Moorberg), one of thousands of young women (government girls, as they were known) who flocked to Washington, DC, to aid the war effort with their secretarial and administrative skills. In time Kerst would also employ newly acquired skills at FBI jobs, skills such as classifying fingerprints and keeping military secrets. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

Mary Lou Kerst came from tiny Crete, Nebraska, to enormous Washington, DC, to aid with the FBI’s increasing responsibilities. She no doubt saw a similar scene to the one above when she arrived by train at Union Station in January 1943. Civilians, officers, enlisted men, and even one nun are hoping to find a ride to perhaps a new job and new home. They are doing their patriotic part by cramming into a cab with several other people, heeding the sign on the column: “Your cooperation solicited to improve taxi service and assist the government in conserving rubber and gas by clubbing together in the use of taxicabs.” This photo of the station’s west-end taxi stand was taken in September 1943. (National Archives)

Although the prewar Federal Bureau of Investigation was accustomed to investigating crimes committed in the United States, the war brought it additional responsibilities, such as tracking suspected spies and saboteurs and even going out of the country to gain information on German agents in Central and South America. Then there were draft dodgers to pursue, immigrants to investigate, and background checks of federal workers to be made. Meanwhile, crime was increasing nationwide as criminals tried to defraud the government and steal from its vast military supplies. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

Of the thousands of women employed by the wartime FBI, hundreds worked in what was known as the Fingerprint Factory. The workers pictured here were part of the classifying section. They were trained in the Henry System of fingerprint identification, the method used in the United States and other English-speaking countries. The system categorized prints by their loops, whorls, and arches. In this scene the women are examining prints under magnification. (National Archives)

The Fingerprint Factory grew so large during the war that it rapidly outgrew its office space. In 1924 it had employed just 25 workers and had about 800,000 print cards. By 1943, 21,000 employees dealt with 70 million cards. Eventually the factory moved and took up 8,000 square feet of the National Guard Armory. The long rectangles shown here in the armory are rows of card catalogs similar in appearance to those once found in public libraries. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

Who were all the people who put their fingerprints on the cards cataloged here? They included the usual criminal element of society, but also members of the armed forces, resident aliens, and war-material manufacturers. There were cards for foreign agents, saboteurs, and others bent on bringing the war to American soil.  Even all the government girls working among the card cases were fingerprinted, as were thousands of other federal workers. (National Archives)

Among the rows of card cases were government girls filing, retrieving, and shuttling cards. Mary Lou Kerst worked 10-hour days at her job, six days a week. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

The large sign above the main doors of the armory facility announced the amount of cards processed by the bureau’s workers on the previous day. The posters on either side of the clock are ads that were intended to encourage workers to buy war bonds, which ultimately paid their salaries. As the ads proclaimed, “FBI means For Better Investments. Buy bonds. They help us do a better job.” (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

Eventually Mary Lou Kerst moved from the fingerprint division to other areas of the bureau to work with top-secret paperwork for agents at home and abroad. The bureau’s secret network of agents identified enemy spies and located Axis radio stations in Central and South America. In addition, agents looked into 19,000 reports of sabotage in the United States. They found 2,282 actual attempts, none of which achieved their intended destruction. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

During the war years, you didn’t just type on a typewriter—you maintained it, too. Here Mary Lou Kerst is using Nutype Type Cleaner on her hard-used machine. With the burgeoning amount of office workers in Washington and elsewhere, and the diversion of metal to munitions, typewriters became hard to find and extra attention was required to keep the old machines operational. Kerst no doubt had her share of inky hands as she wrangled her machine’s unruly ribbons and gummed-up letters. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

It wasn’t all work for the government girls. Once at home—and with blackout curtains carefully drawn—there were the familiar pastimes of reading, knitting, and playing records. Back then, when records ran at 78 rpm, just one or two songs fit on a record’s side. That’s why the large album on the listener’s lap is filled with several records. These women were chemists, and because their specialty was in demand, they had room to relax without bumping into other roommates. The typical wartime Washington worker lived in dorms that were overcrowded due to the housing crisis that the influx of war workers created. The knitter here had even more to be thankful for: She’s wearing nylon stockings, which were extremely difficult to acquire back then. (National Archives)

Another form of relaxation for the government girls was taking in the city’s museums and monuments. Often boys from back home would arrive at Union Station (as shown here) and ask friends already in town to act as tour guides during their stay. Union Station provided both luggage lockers and information booths for travelers. (National Archives)

Mary Lou Kerst often took Nebraska friends sightseeing during time off from war work. Here she (at left) and her roommate, Donna Feeken, stop to pose during a tour with one visitor. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)

With all those handsome, lonely, and homesick men in town, it was practically for the good of the nation that many a government girl found time to attend movies, dinners, and dances with them. (Here’s Mary Lou Kerst on the town with a group.) There were plenty of places to take a beau, from American Legion dances to city nightclubs. Being outside the office may have provided a break from war work, but evidence of the war was in public places, too, such as the sign behind them urging them to buy war bonds. Like countless others, Kerst did buy bonds, which she cashed out to pay for her own wedding after her government girl days were over and Nebraska was her home again. (Courtesy of Mary Lou Kerst Moorberg)