[HN Gopher] A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work, e...
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A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work, eavesdropping on
Japan
Author : wglb
Score : 64 points
Date : 2021-11-09 18:28 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| kazinator wrote:
| > _She said her time in the Girl Guides gave her a grounding in
| Morse code and soon she was sent across the country to join an
| exclusive team._
|
| A grounding in Morse code, and you're off to crack Japanese
| ciphers?
|
| Likely story!
|
| I suspect couldn't decipher the laundering instructions on a T
| shirt from Uniqlo.
| dbcurtis wrote:
| The people copying code off the air were mainly trained that a
| particular sound required that you type a particular key. The
| traffic was all encrypted. The cypher text was passed off to
| others for decryption.
|
| The US Navy trained Filipina natives who did not speak English
| to copy Morse by ear on typewriters. Cypher text was 5
| character code groups. A lot of routine Pacific Fleet traffic
| went that route. The decryption was done by military personnel
| with clearances.
| vmh1928 wrote:
| She didn't decrypt the messages, just listen to the Morse Code
| and write down (or use the special typewriter,) to record the
| message. That document was then forwarded to the actual code
| breakers. The women listeners would have no idea what the
| messages were about.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Summary: The subject (of the article) was a very routine SIGINT
| sergeant in WWII. She worked in Canada, listening on the radio to
| (Imperial) Japanese military signals. She wrote those down on
| paper, then (in effect) mailed the paper to the next stage of the
| SIGINT pipeline. The signals were encrypted (by the Japanese) -
| so she had no way to tell whether one said "Our big attack with
| force X against location Y will happen at time Z", or "Our
| garrison on Useless Island is still bored."
|
| While on paper this was all super-secret, and such dull work was
| very important to the war effort...the Japanese knew that the
| allies had loads of SIGINT radio operators like her, doing jobs
| just like hers. And nothing she knew would have been of much
| value to them.
|
| For me, all the CBC article's hype about super-duper secrecy just
| messes up what could have been a much better human interest
| story.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| It's Veterans day tomorrow so they've gotta publish content
| that's not about the pointless sweat & blood modern veterans
| spent in Afghanistan. As a vet myself, I'm not too into this
| year's commemoration.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| The Japanese poured pointless sweat & blood into WW2. So much
| it destroyed the military dictatorship and turned the country
| practically pacifist for a few decades.
|
| Sometimes losing a war is actually winning. That's the
| positive message about WW2: it cured the losers of glorifying
| war. Maybe Afghanistan can do the same?
| AYBABTME wrote:
| I'm not a pacifist in this manner, I think the current
| state of the world doesn't allow for NATO and aligned
| democratic countries to give up on military supremacy.
| Still, I'm perplexed and annoyed about Afghanistan.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| My roommate took a class in college about WW2 which required
| that you find and interview a veteran (this was the mid 90s)
| and tell their story of the war.
|
| Some of the better past works were shared with the class. The
| one that fascinates me was the story of a lighthouse keeper
| detailed to a remote lighthouse off of Newfoundland. It put in
| perspective the global impact of the war.
| bell-cot wrote:
| _That_ job would seriously scare me. Slip on an icy catwalk,
| and freeze to death with a broken leg. Screw up with the
| light, and a troopship with thousands of soldiers on board
| runs aground in a storm. Do everything perfectly, and a
| U-Boat could still land some Nazi commandos on the tiny
| island...with "do whatever is necessary to secure the
| lightkeeper's cooperation" orders.
| antod wrote:
| _> Do everything perfectly, and a U-Boat could still land
| some Nazi commandos on the tiny island_
|
| Reminds me a bit of the coastwatchers (but warmer)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastwatchers
| https://www.nzhistory.govt.nz/page/nz-coastwatchers-
| executed...
| vmh1928 wrote:
| A good book that describes the information provided to allied
| leaders via the intercepts and decryption of the Japanese
| diplomatic Purple codes is given in the book "Marching Orders" by
| Bruce Lee. ISBN 0-517-57576-0 (c.1995) Lee had access to 1000's
| of the daily decryption and analysis summary reports (called
| Magic Summaries,) and provided to the president, Marshall and
| others. He provides an almost day-by-day chronology showing what
| the leaders knew and how that knowledge shaped their decisions
| about the conduct of the war. [edit: the axis decrypts were
| called Ultra. Allied leaders had access to reports on both.]
| jacquesm wrote:
| In case you're wondering where the 'Magic Summaries' comes
| from:
|
| https://reference.jrank.org/japanese/MAGIC_Intercepts.html
| Animats wrote:
| The British stations for that were called Y-Stations, feeding
| data to Bletchley Park, "Station X".
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(page generated 2021-11-10 23:00 UTC)