Hah, with the German codes they actually started with linguists (and they did keep recruiting some!), but by the time they started working on Japanese codes they'd already decided that what they really needed on this whole codebreaking endeavor was MATH PEOPLE. And crossword enthusiasts.

There was one poor linguist who was assigned the task of compiling an index of Japanese words which NO ONE ever used; she was so miserable and bored that she started learning Chinese in her spare time, and eventually pretty much gave up on indexing altogether and just started reading Chinese novels.