The Code Breakers That Halted The Japanese Invasion | Secrets of War | Timeline

[Music] [Music] shortly after 1:30 a.m. on the 7th of December 1941 the naval intercept station at Bainbridge Island Washington intercepted a transmission from Tokyo bound for the Japanese Embassy in Washington DC the message was in purple the most secret and complex of the Japanese diplomatic ciphers as tensions mounted in the Pacific the importance of breaking the enigmatic cipher became all the more pressing the message was the last in a series that had been sent over the past 18 hours it would become one of the most infamous messages in history the United States had been monitoring the secret communications of Japan as well as those at most of the other world powers for more than two decades the cipher Bureau on a joint undertaking of the department's of State and War had begun the work in 1919 it was headed by Herbert o Yardley a former state department code clerk who had been instrumental in the development of the code in cipher Section mi-8 in the first world war it was the first time the United States had a national organization it's very significant that it was a code-breaking organization it worked against the diplomatic materials of about two dozen foreign countries one of the bureau's first challenges was the diplomatic codes of Japan it would not be an easy task in addition to the complexities of the language itself the Japanese employed nearly a dozen different codes between 1919 and the spring of 1920 in 1921 American President Woodrow Wilson proposed an arms limitation summit to be held in Washington representatives of the United States Great Britain France Italy and Japan would negotiate a treaty to limit the number and size of capital ships allowed in their navies by the time the negotiations commenced Yardley was supplying the State Department with daily decrypts of communications between Japan and its negotiators in Washington essentially as the message is given to the Japanese delegation by their code people Yardley is giving it to our delegation so we know exactly what the Japanese position is what Yardley learned was that the Japanese had secretly instructed their negotiators to settle for much less than they were asking for at the conference table armed with this information the American delegation pressed the point and the Japanese conceded it was a major diplomatic coup for the United States and a major cryptological triumph for Yardley and the cipher Bureau and it was a classic act where prior intelligence information paid off in very handsome dividends in terms of the kind of treaty and we were able to make the Japanese sign yeardley claimed that from its inception the cipher Bureau solved more than 45,000 encrypted telegrams from some 20 foreign governments but its success did not guarantee its survival in 1924 its appropriations were cut by nearly half and in 1929 newly appointed Secretary of State Henry Stimson completely pulled State Department funding of the covert agency there's a legend that when Stimpson closed this down he took a moralistic position he is supposed to have said gentlemen don't read other gentleman's mail I believe it was strictly a budget decision whatever the reason America's primary cryptological effort was suddenly out of business yeardley disgruntled and shorted money wrote the american black chamber an expose of the exploits and successes of the cipher Bureau the book was an instant sensation and scandal the Japanese translate the book and the Japanese learn all about the breaking down of the code this more or less starts to lead toward tighter encryption by the Japanese namely using machines rather than the standard number codes that had been broken the cipher bureaus files some six thousand dollars in leftover funds and the problems that Yardley's book created were transferred to the Army's Signal Corps the chief cryptologist of the Signal Corps was William Frederick Friedman who had been studying codes and ciphers most of his adult life Friedman whose parents had emigrated to the United States from Russia shortly after he was born studied the relatively new field of genetics at Cornell while in graduate school he was offered a job by Colonel George phibian a wealthy Illinois textile merchant colonel george fabian was not a colonel in the conventional military sense he was an honorary title he was an eccentric millionaire who had a large estate outside Chicago and he engaged in various things that interested him he was trying to improve the breeding of animals and various kinds of crops and so forth and he then got into other things it was whatever interested him he had the money and the inclination to pursue among those employed at Fabian's 500-acre estate was Elizabeth Smith a 21 year old librarian on Fabian recruited for one of his more obscure projects my mother was hired by Fabian to help two sisters the Gallup sisters who were Baconian they believe that Sir Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare my mother had recently graduated from college as an English major and she was hired to help them in their studies a theory of the time held that there was a code in the original folios of Shakespeare's plays that when deciphered would reveal their true authorship Friedman and amateur photographer was drafted into the project to take pictures of the texts he enlarged them so Fabian's cryptologists could examine the letters more closely the Shakespeare codes piqued his interest and he began to read the scant information on codes and cyphers than available soon he became the head of Fabian's riverbank Industries Department of ciphers as well as its department of genetics by the time he and Elizabeth Smith were married in May of 1917 they were well on their way to becoming America's premier code breakers initially they really got involved with the government through Fabian's efforts when he realized that he had two people that knew probably more about codes and ciphers than anybody around in the United States at the time he let this be known in Washington and the State Department and the Army started sending messages to riverbanks to be solved and mother and dad would work on them and solve them and send them back in addition to his code breaking activities Friedman tested and advised the government on cipher machines and by the fall of 1917 the Army was sending officers to riverbank for freedmen to Train as part of the lessons Friedman wrote a series of pamphlets which Fabian published and so became known as the riverbank papers the seven booklets he wrote from 1917 to 1918 became Seminole Texas on cryptology as America entered the war Friedman desperately wanted to serve his country and to test what he'd learned about cryptology in the field he was inducted into the Army and sent to Europe in the spring of 1918 just five months before the war ended after the war Friedman returned to riverbank where government projects continued to come his way in 1920 he wrote what would be the most important text in the field of crypt analysis the index of coincidence and it's applications in cryptography was a revolutionary treatise on the statistical analysis of letter frequency and distribution the paper applied science to the alchemy of cryptology in November of the same year the Freedmen's accepted positions as civilian cryptologists for the government so eventually they got to Washington and my father became the chief cryptologist for the Army Signal Corps mother went to work briefly for the Navy and my father started to develop more techniques in both developing codes and ciphers and deciphering codes and ciphers despite the nature of their work the Freedmen's life in Washington in the 1920s was by all accounts normal they bought a house and started a family William was working for the US Army Signal Corps and Elizabeth began working less but soon prohibition would supply her with new assignments and a new set of challenges Elizabeth Freedman was hired by the Treasury Department in the mid 1920s to work against code systems used by smugglers who were violating the prohibition laws and she also trained other krypt analysts to carry on this work Elizabeth Friedman became not only the treasury department's primary cryptologist but also the government's star witness in a number of high-profile smuggling cases and when the Treasury Department determined it needed a full-time Cryptologic unit and she was put in charge of it by the time Secretary of State's Stimson closed the cipher Bureau in 1929 William Friedman's unit now renamed the signal intelligence service consisted of only two people Friedman himself and a typist in response to the growing responsibilities of his office Friedman hired three young mathematicians Frank rollit Abrahamson cough and Solomon Kovac he initiated them into the secret world of cryptology using techniques and principles that he'd developed and refined over the past decades Friedman instructed the young men in the intricacies of codes and cyphers how to recognize them how to make them and how to break them they all had a great aptitude for cryptology the first thing he had him do once they got involved and understood the business was to start developing some stronger codes for the United States and Friedman's words the u.s. codes were atrocious he said once you're able to devise some strong unbreakable codes then you'll be able to break other nation's code soon another member was added a young linguist named John Hurt who had enact for Japanese the signal intelligence service or as is continued to grow but this would be the core of the team that would attack Japan's most secret and mysterious cipher by the early 1930s many Americans believed that war with Japan was inevitable the Japanese invasion Manchuria in 1931 seemed to cast the die of expansionism that would set the Land of the Rising Sun on a collision course with the land of the free in 1934 the Japanese introduced the cipher machine type a as a system for encrypting its secret diplomatic communications US Army made the cracking of this machine which they codenamed to read a top priority the Japanese transmitted their encrypted messages in Morse code by breaking the complex Japanese language into a series of some 50 syllables with an additional 20 syllables used for punctuation and emphasis each syllable was then in ciphered and transmitted in the familiar dots and dashes despite the complexity of the new machine army cryptologists were able to crack the red code by applying these same principles of statistical analysis that friedman had set down in the index of coincidence the signal intelligence service was able to do a rather Swift job of breaking the red code because it in ciphered vowels and consonants differently and they were able to apply statistical knowledge of the frequency of letters in the japanese language to both the vowels and the consonants they became so adept at the system that frank roll had designed a code wheel to quickly decipher read transmissions soon the Americans were able to read all of the diplomatic traffic it intercepted but this success would be short-lived as tensions were rising in the Far East the Japanese introduced a new more complex cipher the Japanese called the new machine the 97 cheeky Obon in G key the American code breakers called it simply purple purple was far more complex than its predecessor but there were things working in the allies favor while more sophisticated purple was not entirely unlike red like the previous machine purple in ciphered vowels and consonants separately making decryption more manageable purple was also similar in that keying sequences were changed daily the Allies were fortunate that in the transition between systems some messages were sent in both they already compromised red as well as the new purple ciphers this duplication gave Friedman's team considerable insight into one day's messages in addition the Japanese code clerks tended to follow a strict protocol in the language of their messages such repetition provided valuable clues to the nature of the entire system in a sense the Crypt analyst didn't have to start from the very beginning but rather the Crypt analysts knew that you know if you you have a an opening of a letter and a closing of a letter you know those are the parameters and you can start to piece things together besides the talent and ingenuity of the cryptologists themselves perhaps the biggest contributor to the success of the sis in its attack on the purple cypher was the introduction of tabulating machines precursors to computers in the process while working on the red cypher Friedman had been allowed to use an IBM accounting machine that the quartermaster Corps was phasing out the machine proved so useful that Friedman acquired a similar unit for the sole use of the signal intelligence service the punch card machines sorted and collated the vast amounts of information that until then had to be sorted by hand in the spring and summer of 1940 the traffic in purple increased dramatically especially between Tokyo and the Japanese embassies in Berlin and Rome this was due to the impending tripartite pact the treaty that would bind the Axis powers the incredible influx of information gave the harried cryptologists more work but also more clues they analyzed weeks and weeks worth of messages statistically they developed an appreciation for the subtle patterns that the machine generated figured out how the system would encrypt using these on and off switching devices and then the system was able to be read by the Americans the first major solution for a message in ciphered with the purple machine came on September 25th 1940 two days before the tripartite pact was signed Friedman's team had done the seemingly impossible but their job was only half done breaking the cypher was just the first step being able to decipher the messages quickly and accurately would require another superhuman effort by analyzing the substitution patterns inherent in the cipher the Esaias cryptologists were able to reverse-engineer a device that would duplicate the output of the Japanese purple machine they designed a machine which used a dozen standard telephone stepping switches to scramble and unscramble messages to keyboards were used for input and output a plug board determined the keying sequence in cipher a message under that system you type a letter on the first electric typewriter goes through and the stepping switches so forth out comes the in ciphered version of it but when you go to decipher it you have the message and you've set up the wheels the same and have the same matrix there's a plug board and you have to get the plugs in the right positions so then when you type the in ciphered letter on the first typewriter here comes the plain language on the other side with the completion of the purple analog the sis was able to decipher messages as fast as the Japanese code clerk's themselves short on funds Friedman arranged to have the Navy build five of the machines since personnel were instructed to completely destroy them when abandoning an embassy no Japanese purple machine was ever captured still pieces of one recovered in Berlin after the war so how incredibly accurate their deductions and design had been the intense pressure Friedman was under began to take a toll in January of 1941 he was admitted to the neuropsychiatric ward of the Army's Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda Maryland it was extremely stressful and my father wound up in the hospital with what in those days was called a nervous breakdown with the situation in the Pacific worsening Friedman was given little time to recover he returned to full-time duty the first of April by the autumn of 1941 it had become apparent that relations with Japan were nearing a breaking point twice purple decrypts indicated that the Japanese considered negotiations at an impasse traffic analysis in Hawaii had warned repeatedly of the formation of a Japanese attack fleet so the messages that were intercepted on the 6th and 7th of December were not entirely a surprise the 14th part of the long message reached Washington around five o'clock the morning of December 7th cryptologists quickly deciphered the message and by 8 a.m. and had been translated from the Japanese it would be hours before Japanese code clerks could even begin to work on it hours before Japanese planes would lift off from the decks of aircraft carriers thousands of miles away five hours before the first bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor the 14th part says essentially diplomatic negotiations are at an end it does not say that the Japanese are going to attack Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning December the 7th but everyone who's working with Japanese American relations knows that a diplomatic brink is coming in very soon probably immediately and that this will ultimately lead to war when Pearl Harbor wasn't warned of the impending attack and the subject of speculation for more than half a century based on this 14 part message the American military indeed sent warning messages to their overseas posts however there was no specific warning about Pearl Harbor and Cole Harbour was not singled out so a routine message was sent turns out when they got into comm center equipted the message up or went to send it out the army circuits were busy said well let's send it out on the Navy surfaces no no we'll send it by RCA and Western Union not as a high precedence either we want to pay for a high precedence message so that's the message the war warning and got out there the general short Wow Pearl Harbor was the [Music] precisely at 1:00 p.m. the Japanese ambassador in Washington was to officially inform the American Secretary of State that negotiations between the two nations had broken down but the Ambassador himself didn't get the deciphered message in time to deliver it before the attack had commenced also hindering Hawaii's ability to anticipate the danger was the fact that none of the American built purple analog machines had been sent to the radio intelligence unit based in Honolulu the machine that had been earmarked for Honolulu had been sent to London as part of an exchange of krypt illogical information with Great Britain but the war had just begun and the Americans had made great strides toward learning the secrets of their foe in the Pacific from the earliest war plans it was foreseen that a war with Japan would be a war of navies armies would still be needed but it would be the battleships cruisers and aircraft carriers they capital ships that twenty years earlier the washington arms limitation treaty had sought to limit that would now determine victory [Music] once war was declared in the Pacific the emphasis shifted from the intentions of diplomats to the plans of generals the Cryptologic alone is shifted from William Friedman in the army signal intelligence service to naval code breakers before 1917 the United States had given little thought to the idea of signal intelligence no significant plans had been made to either secure its own communications or intercept and decrypt those of the enemy during the first world war the Navy's primary signal intelligence effort was in setting up a series of Direction finding stations in the Atlantic to track German shipping and submarines it wasn't until 1924 that the Navy established a permanent communications intelligence organization unlike the Army's sis which always had trouble finding Japanese translators the Navy had a number of officers who served in Japan and were fluent in the language they did not however have a surplus of radio operators experienced in Japanese kana the language of their coded transmissions in 1923 a group of Navy and Marine radio men stationed in the Pacific were unofficially studying the Japanese kana and the Morse code in which they transmitted their wireless communications four of those original Connor radio men became instructors when the Navy began offering classes in Japanese Morse code in 1928 they chose radium and second class or the Marine Corps equivalent from the fleet to go to this school in Washington DC actually the room was a converted room that was built on the top of the roof of the Navy building in Washington DC and these people would come there for a class and they were taught this katakana code somewhere along the line someone dubbed this group of people as the on the roof game be on the roof gang graduates became part of an ever-growing intelligence organization that by June of 1940 included a hundred and forty-seven officers enlisted men and civilians employed in all aspects of signal intelligence they were designated simply as up 20 G while up 20 G also worked on the Japanese diplomatic ciphers their primary focus was on the codes employed by the Japanese military in 1922 naval operatives had quietly broken into the Japanese consul general's office in New York they cracked the safe and photographed some pages of a Japanese naval codebook the code was nicknamed the red book referring to the cover of the binder in which the photocopies were kept despite regular changes to the code naval cryptologists continued their mastery of the system and soon were reading virtually all of the traffic encoded in it the hard work of the naval spies and cryptologists paid off handsomely in the spring of 1930 when Japan held its grand maneuvers I'm studying the war games we were able to learn a great deal about the Japanese order of battle about their state of armaments and about their intentions should war breakout intercepted and decoded messages sent during the japanese grand maneuvers of 1930 revealed not only their war plans the Japanese had correctly anticipated the Americans plans for fighting in the Pacific this traffic also disclosed procedures for mobilizing the Japanese fleet as well and the extent of their land-based defenses the red book was supplanted in December of 1930 by a code that became known as the Blue Book similar in execution to its predecessor Navy code breakers were able to read more than half of the messages encoded in the blue book when Japan once again held war games in 1933 but in addition to the blue book the Japanese employed three fleet codes and nine cipher systems during the exercises it would take the small research desk staff three years to decrypt all of the messages that had been intercepted the Japanese continued to change their codes regularly and in the summer of 1939 issued what would be the most important code of the war in the Pacific the sophisticated high-level naval operational code would be used throughout the war to encrypt Japan's most sensitive and secret military communications the Americans called it jn-25 jn-25 was a Japanese naval general-purpose code jn-25 is the American name for it I'm not sure that we knew what the Japanese themselves called it jnt merely means Japanese Navy 25 meant that it was the 25th system that we knew about the jn-25 codebook similar to this Japanese army codebook listed more than 33,000 words and phrases that were each given a five digit numerical value to this was added a changing five digit key number so that the numeric value that was transmitted it would not be repeated in addition variations on the code were regularly introduced the naval code breakers of op 20g would work for more than a year on the intricate code with little success jn-25 was extremely difficult to crack and by the time Pearl Harbor comes along we were reading probably no more than 10% of jn-25 and that's clearly not enough to know that the Japanese are coming towards Pearl Harbor one of the enduring rumors of the Second World War is that British cryptologists at Bletchley Park had secretly broken jn-25 and had known about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor but withheld the information to force America into the war that's not true the British and the United States had been cooperating somewhat on the attempts to break jn-25 before Pearl Harbor we knew and know the extent of their successes before Pearl Harbor and they had not broken that system it wouldn't be until late in January 1942 that Navy cryptologists would make any significant progress on jn-25 more than a month too late to avoid the disaster of Pearl Harbor but in time to change the course of the war in the Pacific in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor Japan went on an unprecedented spree of expansion and naval conquest from the first week of December of 1941 through the spring of 1942 Japan recorded a stunning string of victories capturing Bangkok Guam Wake Island Hong Kong Manila Bataan Corregidor Singapore and Burma in less than six months the first American victory in the Pacific was scored not over territory it was scored over access to information quietly by the naval code breakers in January of 42 they finally succeeded in breaking the Japanese naval code jn-25 this was broken through trial and error the Americans had to do first of all mathematical analysis examining hundreds thousands perhaps tens of thousands of Japanese messages until they discerned a pattern in the numbers and were able to strip away the numbers from the Edit of table once they did that they had the underlying code book values the breaking of the Japanese code came just in time to alert the u.s. to Japanese plans to invade the tiny Australian outpost of Port Moresby on the island of Papua New Guinea capturing this tiny outpost would secure Japan's stranglehold on the western Pacific in early April of 1942 traffic analysis and direction finders of the naval intelligence station in Hawaii codenamed hypo warned of a Japanese strike force gathering in Ramallah in the first week of May intercepted messages revealed that the Japanese fleet would be in position and ready to strike on the morning of May the 7th armed with this information American Admiral Chester Nimitz finally had a chance to take the offensive accordingly Nimitz was able to send two of our very few carriers the Lexington Yorktown down to Coral Sea to try to stop the Japanese he was also able to send a land-based aircraft increased the number that were available in Port Moresby again to seek out the Japanese and to attack the American Armada intercepted the larger Japanese task force northeast of Australia it was the first battle in naval history in which the two fleets never got within sight of each other for two long days aircraft from the opposing fleets waged a bitter battle over the deep waters of the Coral Sea [Music] so this is the military case of where pre-warned through intelligence you can move your forces on the chess board if you will so that you're able to counter them at the right spot at the right moment both sides sustained heavy losses the American carrier Lexington was sunk and the Yorktown was damaged the Japanese lost the light carrier Shah and had to send two carriers back to Japan for repairs well it wasn't a clear victory for the Allies the superior Japanese fleet had been turned back Port Moresby had been saved this outcome would have serious repercussions in the upcoming Japanese offensives even before the Battle of Coral Sea American intelligence intercepted messages in the Imperial Japanese fleets jn-25 code about another massive carrier strike planned against a US base but the main attack was intended to destroy the American aircraft carriers that had been out to sea in December the previous year and thus had avoided the tragedy of Pearl Harbor virtually the entire Japanese fleet would be involved in the operation which would consist of a diversionary attack on US bases in Aleutians and a small task force that would raid a vital American outpost in the western Pacific when the u.s. fleet responded another larger strike force would ambush the allied Armada from the broken jn-25 he was able to determine the location of the Japanese operation the forces the Japanese intended to deploy and indeed the starting date for the operation itself almost everything a commander would want to know about his enemy armed with his knowledge the Navy rushed repairs in the Yorktown and prepared to set up a trap of its own but there was a disagreement as to the point of the Japanese attack June 25 messages always referred to the area only with the two-letter designator af Midway was suspected as the target the Americans were wrong the result would be disastrous Naval Intelligence in Hawaii came up with a brilliant deception a message was sent saying that Midway was short of fresh water a day or two later we intercept a Japanese message that says there is a shortage of water on and they used the two letters which then identified Midway as the objective and all the other message traffic that we've been able to intercept the Japanese task force heading for Midway greatly outnumbered the American fleet but due to losses in the Battle of the Coral Sea it would contain only four aircraft carriers on the 3rd of June 1942 the Japanese began their attack on the Aleutians just south of Alaska but decrypts had told the American commanders that this was just a feint the real battle was scheduled to begin in the following morning while the smaller Japanese strike force pounded Midway American carrier based aircraft pumped on the main Japanese fleet three of the Japanese couriers were sunk within four minutes by the end of the first day all four were destroyed the battle raged for three days the Japanese losses included four aircraft carriers 275 planes a heavy cruiser three destroyers and 3,500 men by comparison 307 American servicemen lost their lives the u.s. lost one carrier 150 planes and a destroyer it was the most stunning defeat that the Japanese Navy had ever suffered [Music] shortly after the Battle of Midway a story appeared in the Chicago Tribune stating that the Allies had known the Japanese plans implying that the Americans had broken their codes in the investigation that followed the Navy found that the former executive officer of the Yorktown had shared a cabin with the Chicago Tribune reporter on a transport returning to the States the reporter was allowed to read classified documents that detailed covert operations relating to the battle fortunately at that time although the Japanese had still had people in Mexico and some other places they seemed to be more interested in the New York Times in the Washington Post and some of the West Coast newspapers to avoid further publicity the Navy officer was not prosecuted but he was secretly barred from further promotions the Japanese continued to use the jn-25 code for their high-level naval communications on the 14th of April 1943 the radio intelligent Durand in Hawaii intercepted a message detailing the plans for an inspection tour of Japanese bases in the Solomon Islands the inspection was to be conducted by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto Japan's most highly regarded naval strategist the message was quickly deciphered and translated Yama motors nearest approach to American forces would be the island of Bougainville some 400 miles from the US base on Guadalcanal the information was forwarded to the US commander Admiral Nimitz who now had a tantalizing decision to make use the information and attempt to assassinate Yamamoto and risk alerting the Japanese to American success in breaking their codes or pass on what might be a golden opportunity it was determined that the new Lockheed p-38 aircraft equipped with extra gas tanks could make the long flight but there would be a very small window of opportunity to assassinate the Japanese Admiral if the p-38s were to make it back to Guadalcanal they could stay in the area less than 10 minutes the mission would require a near split-second timing but yamamoto was known to be punctual to a fault on the morning of April 18th 1943 18 p38 lifted off from Henderson Field on Guadalcanal heading Northwest they food just above the waves to avoid raid outer the squadron made the 435 miles flight in just over two hours they got there ten seconds off their estimated time of arrival and as they peeled in over the island they looked over and here came two petty bombers escorted by zeroes on a landing approach and they knew they had to man Yamamoto his plane was shot down over the jungle as it approached for a landing all aboard were killed [Music] but had Nimitz's gamble paid off or had the Americans tipped their hand did the Japanese know that the Americans were reading their mail in fact after the shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto the Japanese guessed that we had intercepted his aircraft based on decrypt information but fortunately for the United States they guessed wrong as to which code we had broken nearly 40 years would pass before many in Japan learned the truth that their greatest military leader of the Second World War had been the explicit target of American fighters and despite whatever strategic or tactical advantage Yamamoto's death may have given the Allies it was perhaps fitting that American aviators and naval code breakers had been responsible for the demise of the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbor code breaking had played a vital role in some of the most decisive Allied victories in the Pacific but the war wasn't over yet navel cryptologists recorded an impressive string of accomplishments beyond the work on the Japanese naval code jn-25 and their work paid significant dividends throughout the war I think it's very interesting that the Japanese merchant shipping in Pacific that was out there supply their military used the water transport code that the Navy had broken of course unknown to the Japanese and they had to transmit daily their position to a higher headquarters at noon every day with this detailed information American submarines were dispatched to the area to await their prize I just choked off the Japanese supply and through this breaking of the maru code and the communications is with the submarine force they were able to affect this tremendous damage on the Japanese shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of supplies bound for the Japanese war machine were destroyed in this matter the army signal intelligence services worked on the purple cypher continued to be a valuable asset even after the Japanese Embassy in Washington was closed Japanese diplomats in other countries continued to use purple and much of this communication proved highly valuable not only in the war in the Pacific but also in the war against Hitler in Europe the Japanese ambassador to Berlin Baron Hiroshi Oshima was a three-star general and an avid proponent of Nazi ideals he was given unprecedented access to sensitive areas and updates on the German war effort Hitler saw to it that he was invited to Nazi Party functions saw to it that he had briefings by the high command and frontline tours being a good soldier Oshima wrote detailed reports and ciphered them in the purple system and broadcast them to tokyo Oshima's reports on the success or failure of bombing raids and german cities and different factories for example supplied the Allies with detailed information that was extraordinarily beneficial to the war effort Oceania would tour these bombed out sites or you know radio back reports of how bad the RF or the American army air corps pounded raised in Lubec or hun / or some other german city the night before and he said well you know they missed this plant in this plant in that plant but then you know the next night they didn't because the ocean was leaked in November of 1943 Oshima was taken on an extensive tour of the Atlantic Wall the system of concrete barbed wire machine guns and artillery that was to be Germany's first line of defense against an Allied invasion Oshima's 20 page report and what he saw during this tour was intercepted deciphered and sent to the planners of the d-day invasion general Marshall and the American army chief of staff in the Second World War he said that that Oshima Hiroshi the Japanese ambassador in Berlin was our key source of information concerning Hitler's intentions even as the war was coming to a close purple continued to supply the Allies with insight into what the enemy was thinking in the months before the planned invasion of Japan decrypted traffic showed that Japanese ambassadors were looking for an avenue to discuss peace unfortunately the military leaders who by then controlled the Japanese government were of a different mind they hoped to inflict enough casualties and the Americans that they could dictate peace terms the interception of this information helped Sea of Japan is faked cryptologists don't win battles soldiers sailors pilots do but the achievements of American Army and Navy code breakers ensure that many more of those warriors that were sent to defend democracy in the Pacific would return home when the fighting had ended the Japanese throughout the war were very much of the mind that their coats were unbreakable and it's a good thing because we believe that breaking the Japanese codes in world war ii probably shortened that conflict by about two years saved millions of lives the signal intelligence and cryptological organizations that were built by the United States military were not dismantled when hostilities ceased as they had been after the first world war leaders of world war ii became the military and civilian leaders of the post-war world they very clearly understood the value that code making and code breaking had given them in World War two the advantage it had provided they were determined to protect this capability in the post-war world and they knew the value of holding your hand close nobody should know your secrets so we kept not only a capability going of looking at other nations codes and getting intelligence from them but we kept the effort going to develop secure systems for United States in 1952 president harry s truman consolidated many of the country's cryptological responsibilities and resources with the establishment of the National Security Agency William F Friedman became its chief technical consultant and two years later he became special assistant to the director when he retired he was replaced by Frank Rowland his first student at the Army Signal Corps Elizabeth Friedman also contributed to post-war security in the United States setting up the cryptology Bureau of the OSS the predecessor to the CIA after they retired Elizabeth and William Friedman revisited the subject that's at them both on the road to lifelong careers in cryptology in 1954 I think it was after my father retired they said about writing a paper for a contest at the Folger Shakespeare Library their monograph was called the cryptologist looks at Shakespeare and then it was adopted by Cambridge University Press and renamed and published under the title Shakespearean ciphers examined which annoyed them greatly because it implied there were ciphers in the Shakespeare plays and their whole book was to show that there weren't any real ciphers there even though their search for secret codes in the works of Shakespeare was in vain their search for secrets in the messages of hostile Nations helped to win a world war when looking back at cryptology in the 20th century the codes and ciphers the countries that used them and the men of women who created and broke them a few things become apparent nations will always endeavor to keep secrets and other nations will endeavor to learn those secrets today computers shroud communications in a veil of complexity undreamed-of by Herbert Yardley but the lessons of his work hold true in his book the American black chamber he hardly said if no attempt is made to decipher messages during quiet periods when there seems no likelihood of important issues arising the true aims and intentions of a government cannot possibly be ascertained one never knows at what moment another government will start a movement prejudicial to our interests [Music] perhaps the best lesson is that gentlemen do read each other's mail

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Length: 50min 55sec (3055 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Lichbingeking]

Charlton Heston is the narrator

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1963940/?ref_=ttep_ep23

[u/paddyplaistow]

Very interesting. Great post thank you.

[u/pieguy221]

Charlton motherfucking Heston.

I love Secrets of War, I've seen nearly every episode now.