Japanese naval codes

The vulnerability of Japanese naval codes and ciphers was crucial to the conduct of World War II, and had an important influence on foreign relations between Japan and the west in the years leading up to the war as well. Every Japanese code was eventually broken, and the intelligence gathered made possible such operations as the victorious American ambush of the Japanese Navy at Midway (JN-25b) and the shooting down of Isoroku Yamamoto in Operation Vengeance.

The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) used many codes and ciphers. All of these cryptosystems were known differently by different organizations; the names listed below are those given by Western cryptanalytic operations.

Red code

This was a code book system used in World War I and after. It was so called because the American copies made of it were bound in red covers. It should not be confused with the RED cipher used by the diplomatic corps.

This code consisted of two books. The first contained the code itself; the second contained an additive cipher which was applied to the codes before transmission, with the starting point for the latter being embedded in the transmitted message. A copy of the code book was obtained in a "black bag" operation on the luggage of a Japanese naval attache in 1923; after three years of work Agnes Driscoll was able to break the additive portion of the code.[1][2][3]

Coral

A cipher machine developed for Japanese naval attaché ciphers. It was not much used.[4][5]

Dockyard codes

A succession of codes used to communicate between Japanese naval installations. These were comparatively easily broken by British codebreakers in Singapore and are believed to have been the source of early indications of imminent naval war preparations.[6]

JN-11

The Fleet Auxiliary System, derived from the JN-40 merchant-shipping code. Important for the information on troop convoys and orders of battle.

JN-25

JN-25 is the name given by codebreakers to the main, and most secure, command and control communications scheme used by the IJN during World War II. Named as the 25th Japanese Navy system identified, it was initially given the designation AN-1 as a "research project" rather than a "current decryption" job. The project required reconstructing the meaning of thirty thousand code groups and piercing together thirty thousand random additives.[7]

Introduced from 1 June 1939 to replace Blue (and the most recent descendant of the Red code),[8] it was an enciphered code, producing five-numeral groups for transmission. New code books and super-enciphering books were introduced from time to time, each new version requiring a more or less fresh cryptanalytic attack. In particular, JN-25 was significantly changed on 1 December 1940,[9] and again on 4 December 1941,[10] just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The 1941 edition (JN-25b) was sufficiently broken by late May 1942 to provide the critical forewarning of the Japanese attack on Midway.

British, Australian, Dutch and American workers were cooperating in attacks on JN-25 well before the Pearl Harbor attack, but because the Japanese Navy was not engaged in significant battle operations before then, there was little traffic available to use as raw material. Before then, IJN discussions and orders could generally travel by routes more secure than broadcast, such as courier or direct delivery by an IJN vessel. Publicly available accounts differ, but the most credible agree that the JN-25 version in use before December 1941 was not more than perhaps 10% broken at the time of the attack, and that primarily in stripping away its super-encipherment. JN-25 traffic increased immensely with the outbreak of naval warfare at the end of 1941 and provided the cryptographic "depth" needed to succeed in substantially breaking the existing and subsequent versions of JN-25.

The American effort was directed from Washington, D.C. by the U.S. Navy's signals intelligence command, OP-20-G; at Pearl Harbor it was centered at the Navy's Combat Intelligence Unit (Station HYPO, also known as COM 14),[11] led by Commander Joseph Rochefort. With the assistance of Station CAST (also known as COM 16, jointly commanded by Lts Rudolph Fabian and John Lietwiler)[12] in the Philippines, and the British Far East Combined Bureau in Singapore, and using a punched card tabulating machine manufactured by International Business Machines, a successful attack was mounted against the December 1941 code edition. Together they made considerable progress by early 1942. "Cribs" exploited common formalities in Japanese messages, such as "I have the honor to inform your excellency" (see known plaintext attack).

JN-39

This was a naval code used by merchant ships (commonly known as the "maru code"),[13] broken in May 1940. 28 May 1941, when the whale factory ship Nisshin Maru No. 2 (1937) visited San Francisco, U.S. Customs Service Agent George Muller and Commander R. P. McCullough of the U.S. Navy's 12th Naval District (responsible for the area) boarded her and seized her codebooks, without informing Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). Copies were made, clumsily, and the originals returned.[14] The Japanese quickly realized JN-39 was compromised, and replaced it with JN-40.[15]

JN-40

JN-39 was replaced by JN-40, which was originally believed to be a code super-enciphered with a numerical additive in the same way as JN-25. However, in September 1942, an error by the Japanese gave clues to John MacInnes and Brian Townend, codebreakers at the British FECB, Kilindini. It was a fractionating transposition cipher based on a substitution table of 100 groups of two figures each followed by a columnar transposition. By November 1942, they were able to read all previous traffic and break each message as they received it. Enemy shipping, including troop convoys, was thus trackable, exposing it to Allied attack. Over the next two weeks they broke two more systems, the "previously impenetrable" JN167 and JN152.[16][15]

JN-147

The "minor operations code" often contained useful information on minor troop movements.[17]

JN-152

A simple transposition and substitution cipher used for broadcasting navigation warnings. In 1942 after breaking JN-40 the FECB at Kilindini broke JN-152 and the previously impenetrable JN-167, another merchant shipping cypher.[18]

JN-167

A merchant-shipping cipher (see JN-152).

Chicago Tribune incident

In June 1942 the Chicago Tribune, run by isolationist Col. Robert R. McCormick, published an article implying that the United States had broken the Japanese codes, saying the U.S. Navy knew in advance about the Japanese attack on Midway Island, and published dispositions of the Japanese invasion fleet. The Executive Officer of Lexington, Commander Morton T. Seligman, had shown Nimitz's executive order to reporter Stanley Johnston.

The government at first wanted to prosecute the Tribune under the Espionage Act of 1917. For various reasons, including the desire not to bring more attention to the article, the charges were dropped. A Grand Jury investigation did not result in prosecution but generated further publicity and, according to Walter Winchell, "tossed security out of the window". Britain's worst fears about American security were realized.[19]

In early August, a RAN intercept unit in Melbourne heard Japanese messages, using a superseded lower-grade code. Changes were made to codebooks and the call-sign system, starting with the new JN-25 codebook (issued two months before). However the changes indicated the Japanese believed the Allies had worked out the fleet details from traffic analysis or had obtained a codebook and additive tables, being reluctant to believe that anyone could have broken their codes (least of all a Westerner).[20]

References

  1. ↑ Sterling, Christopher H. (2007). Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century. ABC-CLIO. pp. 126–127. ISBN 978-1-85109-732-6. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
  2. ↑ "Red Code". Retrieved 2009-05-01.
  3. ↑ Budiansky 2000.
  4. ↑ http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/bpt/japcdsch2.html
  5. ↑ Smith, p.125
  6. ↑ Smith, p.93
  7. ↑ Budiansky, Stephen (2000). Battle of Wits: The complete story of Codebreaking in World War II. New York: Free Press. pp. 7–12. ISBN 0-684-85932-7.
  8. ↑ Wilford, Timothy. "Decoding Pearl Harbor: USN Cryptanalysis and the Challenge of JN-25B in 1941", in The Northern Mariner XII, No.1 (January 2002), p.18.
  9. ↑ Wilford, p.18.
  10. ↑ Wilford, p.20: citing Kahn, The Codebreakers.
  11. ↑ Wilford, p.19.
  12. ↑ Wilford, pp.19 and 29.
  13. ↑ Blair, Silent Victory, passim
  14. ↑ Farago, Ladislas. The Broken Seal (New York: Bantam, 1968), pp.393-395.
  15. 1 2 "Obituary: Brian Townend". London: The Times. March 2, 2005. Retrieved 1 May 2009.
  16. ↑ Smith 2000, p. 150.
  17. ↑ Smith 2000, pp. 191.
  18. ↑ Smith (2000) page 153 & (2001) pp140-143
  19. ↑ Gabriel Schoenfeld (March 2006). "Has the "New York Times" Violated the Espionage Act?". Commentary Magazine. Archived from the original on 2012-01-18. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
  20. ↑ Smith 2000, pp. 142,143.

Sources

  • Budiansky, Stephen (2000). Battle of Wits: The complete story of Codebreaking in World War II. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0-684-85932-7.
  • Smith, Michael (2000). The Emperor’s Codes: Bletchley Park and the breaking of Japan’s secret ciphers. London: Bantam Press. ISBN 0593 046412.
  • Smith, Michael and Erskine, Ralph (editors): Action this Day (2001, Bantam London; pages 127-151) ISBN 0-593-04910-1 (Chapter 8: An Undervalued Effort: how the British broke Japan’s Codes by Michael Smith)
  • "Bletchley Park In Mombasa". Coastweek Newspapers Ltd. Retrieved 19 October 2006.
  • Michael J. O'Neal. "World War II, United States Breaking of Japanese Naval Codes". Retrieved 19 October 2006.
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