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Chapter 1307: Strong West Wind

Dai Chunfeng looked at the report in his hand, then looked at Wei Daming, the head of the "Daishan" company across the desk. He opened his mouth, not knowing what to say, and could only wipe his forehead, where the hair was becoming increasingly thinner.

As the head of the Military Intelligence Bureau's electronic reconnaissance and communications department, Wei Daming's work ability is unquestionable, but sometimes being too capable is not a good thing, like now.

The "Daishan" Company actually obtained information about the Japanese's impending attack on Pearl Harbor by deciphering secret messages.

Old Dai didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He had known about this for a long time. Even the Japanese intelligence operation to investigate Honolulu was led by the Military Control Commission. However, some things can be said but not done, and some things can be done but not said.

The Nationalist government's original plan was to secretly add fuel to the flames and tell the Americans the intelligence at the last minute to seek benefits, but they didn't expect an accident to happen, and now they were in trouble.

Given the Nationalist government's ability to keep secrets, the matter might have already been leaked. The Huangshan official residence has lost its bargaining chips, so how can it bargain with the Americans?

Rubbing his swollen temples, Dai Chunfeng put down the report and sighed helplessly: "Daming, please tell me the details. How come you... How many people know about this?"

Wei Daming glanced at Lao Dai secretly, feeling that he was being blamed by him. However, he immediately reported the decryption process and mentioned a person at the same time.

"Reporting to the Director, the decryption operation was completed by Daishan Company and the Military and Political Department Research Office. Director Chi of the research office is fluent in Japanese and has provided us with great help."

Dai Chunfeng was completely heartbroken. If only one department of the "Daishan" company was involved, things might have turned around, but the Military and Political Department was a big sieve.

Since the war broke out, the top-secret intelligence leaking out of the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs could fill several trucks. The Military Intelligence Bureau, like a tinker, patched up one hole after another, but the results were not satisfactory and the intelligence was still leaked.

As for Director Chi, Old Dai had also heard of him. This man was a scholar studying in Japan and was highly regarded by Minister He of the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs.

Dai Chunfeng was thinking about this while Wei Daming's report was still going on. He said that the Military and Political Department's Research Office began studying Japanese secret telegrams before the war, but unfortunately there has been little progress.

This situation did not change until Director Chi appeared. Although he studied electrical engineering and economics, he was quite talented in deciphering codes. In addition, he was quick-witted and good at engineering actuarial science, so he quickly found a breakthrough.

Director Chi discovered that Japan's secret telegrams, especially those in the diplomatic system, were mixed with English letters and katakana, with English letters being the majority.

The current internationally accepted telegram encoding methods include area codes and natural codes (not the computer input encoding methods of the 80s). The former is mostly used for plain text telegrams, while the latter is a common expression method for secret codes.

In natural codes, characters, words or phrases of plain text are replaced with specific symbols, letters or numbers in groups of two to form cipher text.

Director Chi then divided the intercepted Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs secret message into multiple double-word groups from beginning to end, and then observed it, hoping to find some pattern and thus obtain the basic encryption ideas of the secret message.

After a long period of research, he made a surprising discovery that several groups of these "two-letter combinations" were used particularly frequently.

For example: MY, HL, GI, etc., often appear in telegrams.

In addition to their high frequency of use, they are often combined in groups of three or four, or four or five, or appear in a reversed manner front and back.

This phenomenon caused Director Chi to think about what these most common letter combinations actually mean.

To be more specific, are they punctuation marks, or auxiliary words and function words such as "的、了、不、一", or Arabic numerals?

Director Chi continued the investigation and made further discoveries. There were exactly ten groups of these frequently used double-word groups, no more and no less.

First of all, no matter which language, it is impossible to use multiple punctuation marks continuously. Although function words and auxiliary words are used frequently, there are rarely overlapping structures or combinations with each other.

Therefore, this rules out the possibility that "MY, HL, GI" are punctuation marks, function words, or auxiliary words.

According to the reductio ad absurdum method, there is only one possibility, that these double-word groups with extremely high frequency of appearance are the codes used to represent the ten numbers from 0 to 9.

If you can find out which group is 1 and which group is 2, it will not be difficult to continue to find out the combination pattern, and deciphering them one by one is just a matter of time.

When Dai Chunfeng heard this, he couldn't help but applaud. Director Chi's decryption ideas were clear and logical, and he was worthy of being the telecommunications ace of the Ministry of Military and Political Affairs.

But which numbers do these ten sets of passwords correspond to?

Moreover, a secret telegram cannot contain only numbers. It also contains other text content. According to the previous work experience of the Military Control Commission, this text content is valuable intelligence.

Wei Daming nodded. This was what he admired most about Director Chi. He had collected many Japanese books, magazines, newspapers, and even novels through statistical methods, and indeed found a pattern.

"Oh?" Dai Chunfeng asked curiously, "What's the pattern?"

Wei Daming replied: "Whether in the Republic of China or other countries, the most commonly used number is 1, and the least commonly used number is 9.

Based on this assumption, Director Chi assumed the most frequently used letter combination to be 1 and the least frequently used one to be 9.

Based on the fact that 0 rarely appears at the beginning of a number, the letter combination that basically does not appear at the beginning of a telegram is defined as the number 0.

In this way, we have preliminarily deciphered three numbers, namely 1, 9, and 0. After determining these three reference points, we can proceed to the next step of deciphering. "Dai Chunfeng listened more and more attentively, motioning Wei Daming to sit down and talk. Wei Daming bowed slightly, sat down on the stool carefully, and told him the rest of the deciphering process.

"Director Chi believes that after every major war, the numbers in the Japanese secret telegrams are likely to represent the unit numbers, number of soldiers, quantity of guns and ammunition, date, etc. of both sides.

The research room used a Japanese military secret message that may involve information about the 102nd Division of the Korean Army as a breakthrough point to verify the previous decryption results and see if the two-letter combination representing 1 and 0 was connected.

The answer was as expected, proving that Director Chi's reasoning was accurate. The two-letter combination representing the number 2 was also clear, and the remaining numbers were easy to guess.

In addition, the unit number in the telegram is often followed by the word "chang" or "bu", such as "102nd Division Commander" or "102nd Division Headquarters", so two single words are deciphered.

However, this piecemeal approach to deciphering is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also prone to errors. Director Chi then established a new way to decipher the text based on the Japanese pronunciation.

There are ten case particles in Japanese. Because of their high frequency of use, Director Chi quickly found them one by one from the secret telegram. Director Chi also deduced the related words based on the Japanese word usage habits.

For example, at the end of the Japanese military telegram, there is usually the phrase "返电フ戚ウ" (please call back). According to the position of the particle, the secret code representing "返", "电" and "戚" is clear.

Following this line of thought, we can also find common texts by analyzing the Japanese secret telegrams in the same time and space. "

Wei Daming's words are easy to understand. Taking the Japanese troops stationed in Hunan Province as an example, the telegrams sent by the other party must contain place name particles and two-letter combinations representing Hunan and the province.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

Dai Chunfeng nodded. He knew some Japanese and the basic principles of code breaking. Director Chi’s method could be summed up in seven words.

Summarize, generalize, and find patterns.

These seven words sound easy but are difficult to do. Without sufficient patience, a smart mind and a firm will, it is impossible to do it.

On the other hand, Wei Daming said that through the above-mentioned decryption methods, Director Chi discovered that most of the secret codes of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs begin with LA, abbreviated as "LA code", which contains a variety of code words representing international relations.

“Western winds are tight”, representing the tense relationship with the United States;
"Sunny in the North" means a easing of relations with Red Russia;
"Rain in the southeast" means that the battlefield of the Republic of China is tight;

"Daughter returns to her parents' home" means evacuating overseas Chinese.

The great success of the Military and Political Department's Research Office in deciphering Japan's secret telegrams attracted Wei Daming's attention, and the two sides began to cooperate. The two institutions exchanged intelligence and discoveries many times, and the National Government's deciphering of Japan's secret telegrams became more and more in-depth.

Two days ago, Director Chi successfully intercepted a secret telegram sent by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Japanese Embassy in the United States. The telegram contained three contents.

1. The Imperial Government has decided to take drastic measures in accordance with the Imperial Conference, with the plan codenamed "Z".

2. After Plan Z succeeds, the embassy will immediately burn all code books, leaving only ordinary code books, and burn all confidential documents at the same time.

3. To notify relevant depositors as far as possible and transfer the embassy funds to banks in neutral countries.

Director Chi and Wei Daming, who saw the secret telegram, thought of one thing: before the "Battle of Shanghai", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sent a secret telegram to the Japanese consulates in China, ordering them to burn the code books.

Based on the above information, the two concluded that the war between Japan and the United States was inevitable and that the Japanese were likely to launch a sneak attack on the United States, right in Honolulu.

There are two pieces of evidence.

First, after May 1941, the number of secret telegrams between the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate in Honolulu suddenly increased, and the content changed from trade matters involving Japanese expatriates to increasingly confidential news.

Second, these secret telegrams contained a large amount of military information. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs repeatedly asked the consulate which day had the most warships in Pearl Harbor, and the answer was Sunday.

Through countless messy intelligence, Director Chi and Wei Daming analyzed that the Japanese army was about to attack Pearl Harbor, most likely early in the morning on a Sunday.

Because the ships were still docked at the dock and the soldiers were resting, Pearl Harbor's defenses were the weakest and a sneak attack could achieve the best results.

Wei Daming said this while looking at Old Dai with great satisfaction, "Daishan" Company has made such a great contribution, the bureau should at least give some recognition to it.

Dai Chunfeng deliberated for a long time and first made some big promises to fool Wei Daming away. Then he went to the Huangshan official residence to report the matter to someone, but that person didn't care after hearing the news.

He said self-deprecatingly that with the arrogance of Americans, even if the evidence was placed in front of them, they would not believe that the National Government had the ability to decipher Japan's secret messages.

This is indeed the case. When the US Secretary of State received the "early warning" intelligence from the Republic of China, he did not even bother to take a second look at it and directly threw the telegram into the trash can.

The Secretary of State also joked with the staff around him that Japan's attack on the great America was the funniest joke of the year. If the fighting power of the people of the Republic of China was as strong as their sense of humor, they might have driven the Japanese away long ago.

The staff burst into laughter and agreed with the Secretary of State's remarks. Only a few people were worried, but they did not dare to express their opposition because of their low status.

In the early morning of the same day, Zuo Zhong, Wu Chunyang and He Yijun arrived in Washington and successfully connected with Gucci and others.