Women Who Spied by A. A. Hoehling

Author:A. A. Hoehling [Hoehling, A. A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Madison Books
Published: 1992-12-25T16:00:00+00:00

Part 2

WOMEN SPIES COME OF AGE

5

DOLLS IN MUFTI

Velvalee Dickinson, 1944

“Dear Friend,” the long, rambling letter to Señor Inez Lopez de Molinali, in Buenos Aires, commenced, “you probably wonder what has become of me as I haven’t written to you for so long. We have had a pretty bad month or so. . . .”

And so began one of the most curious spy cases to come out of World War II, or quite likely any conflict. It was one in which money, glory, flamboyance, the thrill of the hunt and being hunted apparently played no part at all. Possibly its inspiration was a blind passion for a country other than one’s own. If not, then Velvalee Dickinson’s betrayal was totally without impetus. And that was most improbable, too.

Velvalee Malvena Blucher was the smallest girl among her immediate playmates in Sacramento, barely five feet tall. Sparrowlike, straw blonde, and wholly nondescript in appearance, Velvalee was the daughter of plain but well-to-do parents, Otto Blucher, West Virginia-born, and the former Elizabeth C. Bottoms, from Kentucky.

At the age of eighteen, in June, 1911, Velvalee graduated from Sacramento High School, and from a private seminary in Berkeley two years later. Her education was continued at Sacramento Junior College and, finally, at Leland Stanford University. She qualified for her Bachelor of Arts in 1917, after a year’s attendance. For some unstated reason, the degree was not formally awarded until 1937.

Like all spies of consequence, Velvalee’s personal biography is less than definitive. Apparently she did not work full time until 1925 when she was employed by the file department of a San Francisco bank. Two years later she became a bookkeeper with a brokerage house in the same city. It was a firm which handled many Japanese accounts, especially in produce brokerage.

There she met Lee Taylor Dickinson, its owner. Her subsequent marriage to him was said to be her third, after two unsuccessful tries. If so, it is not on record who were her first two mates.

Soon, Velvalee gained the reputation of being an excellent businesswoman. As a somewhat dubious bonus, her unusual interest in her clients caused her to be tagged by neighbors as a “Jap-lover.”

In the early 1930’s, Lee Dickinson extended his business to the Imperial Valley, where many Japanese farmers had settled. Velvalee’s name, not surprisingly, became well known to Japanese consular and military attachés on the West Coast. The Dickinsons—possibly at first for business reasons—joined the Japanese-American Society, and were conscientious attendants at activities which in any way were connected with the Japanese colony.

The Dickinsons were so popular in fact that when Velvalee was dropped from the Society for nonpayment of dues, a confidential attaché at the Japanese consulate in San Francisco, Kaoru Nakashima, gallantly anted up for her. Velvalee was reinstated.

This possibly exaggerated identification with his customers did not save Dickinson’s brokerage firm from failing in 1935. Perhaps it even accelerated the process.

Velvalee sought and obtained various jobs: with the California State Emergency Relief Administration, in San Francisco, and with the County Welfare Department as a social service investigator.

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