Description - Breaking Japanese Diplomatic Codes by Desmond Ball
During
the Second World War, Australia maintained a super-secret organisation, the
Diplomatic (or `D’) Special Section, dedicated to breaking Japanese
diplomatic codes. The Section has remained officially secret as successive
Australian Governments have consistently refused to admit that Australia ever
intercepted diplomatic communications, even in war-time.
This book recounts the history of the Special Section and describes its
code-breaking activities. It was a small but very select organisation, whose
`technical’ members came from the worlds of Classics and Mathematics. It
concentrated on lower-grade Japanese diplomatic codes and cyphers, such as
J-19 (FUJI), LA and GEAM. However, towards the end of the war it also worked
on some Soviet messages, evidently contributing to the effort to track down
intelligence leakages from Australia to the Soviet Union.
This volume has been produced primarily as a result of painstaking efforts
by David Sissons, who served in the Section for a brief period in 1945. From
the 1980s through to his death in 2006, Sissons devoted much of his time as
an academic in the Department of International Relations at ANU to compiling
as much information as possible about the history and activities of the Section
through correspondence with his former colleagues and through locating a
report on Japanese diplomatic codes and cyphers which had been written by
members of the Section in 1946. Selections of this correspondence, along with
the 1946 report, are reproduced in this volume. They comprise a unique
historical record, immensely useful to scholars and practitioners concerned
with the science of cryptography as well as historians of the cryptological
aspects of the war in the Pacific.
“This publication fills an important gap in the present available knowledge
concerning code-breaking in Australia during World War II. It also gives
overdue recognition to the important contribution made by David Sissons to
this subject”.
Professor John Mack, School of Mathematics and
Statistics, University of Sydney.
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