Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 01:21 PM 11/10/04 +0900, Karen Nakamura wrote: >I read that the reason the Japanese naval code was broken so easily >during the Pacific War was that they used regular morse code in roman >letters rather than a more complex code that combined katakana and >kanji. The Japanese language only have 5 vowels and 13 consonants and >repeats them in regular patterns (a vowel always after one of the >consonants). So a simple cipher was easy to break. Karen Thanks for pointing out some quite relevant points. However, the Japanese Naval Codes were quite difficult to break and only JN-25 was broken after the war erupted, though others were broken from documents recovered from captured Japanese headquarters as the war progressed. In any event, the US had not broken any Japanese Naval Codes other than routine ones such as convoy directives and the like before 7/8 DEC 1941. The code broken before the war broke out was the Diplomatic Code, and this was encrypted in Japanese script. Friedman's team had to develop a Japanese typewriter to accomodate the decryption process. (Friedman's models and records were stored at the Virginia Military Institute for many years, where I obtained access with a pass key thirty years back while working there as a weekend guide. Later, a Freedom-of-Information request caused these to be recovered by the CIA where they are now hidden at Langley beneath successive levels of security classifications.) Marc msmall@infionline.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!