Cicada Moving

Chapter 1307 The west wind is tight

Dai Chunfeng looked at the report in his hand, and then at Wei Daming, the head of "Daishan" company across the desk. He opened his mouth and didn't know what to say, so he had to wipe his forehead with increasingly thinning hair.

As the head of the military's electronic reconnaissance and communications department, there is no doubt about Wei Daming's ability to work, but sometimes having too much ability is not a good thing, just like now.

The "Daishan" company actually mastered the information that the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor by deciphering the secret messages.

Lao 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 commander, but there were some things that could be said but not done, and some things that could be said but not said.

The original plan of the national government was to secretly add fuel to the flames and tell the Americans the intelligence at the last moment to seek benefits. Unexpectedly, something unexpected happened, and now it was in trouble.

With the government's ability to keep secrets, this matter has probably spread out. The Huangshan official residence has no leverage, so how can they bargain with the Americans?

Rubbing his swollen temples, Dai Chunfeng put down the report and sighed helplessly: "Da Ming, please tell me the specific situation. How come you... Oh, how many people know about this matter?"

Wei Daming glanced at Lao Dai quietly, always feeling that the other person was blaming him, but he immediately reported the deciphering process and mentioned a person at the same time.

"Reporting to the Bureau, the deciphering operation was completed jointly by Daishan Company and the Research Office of the Ministry of Military Affairs. Director Chi of the Research Office is proficient in Japanese and gave us a lot of help."

Dai Chunfeng's heart was completely broken. If only one department of the "Daishan" company was involved, things might turn around, but the Military and Political Department was a big sieve.

Since the beginning of the war, the top-secret intelligence flowing out from the Ministry of Military Affairs and Administration could fill several trucks. The military commander, the tinker, has patched up holes one after another, but the results have been unsatisfactory and the intelligence has continued to leak.

As for Director Chi, Lao Dai also heard about it. He was a scholar studying in Japan and was highly valued by Minister He of the Military and Political Department.

Dai Chunfeng was thinking that Wei Daming's report was still continuing. He said that the research work on Japanese secret messages by the Research Office of the Ministry of Military Affairs started before the war, but unfortunately there has been little progress.

This situation did not change until Director Chi showed up. Although he studied electrical engineering and economics, he was quite talented in deciphering codes. In addition, he had a quick mind and was good at engineering actuarial calculations, so he quickly found a breakthrough.

Director Chi discovered that Japanese secret messages, especially those of the diplomatic system, were mixed with English letters and katakana, and most of them contained English letters.

The current internationally accepted message encoding methods include location codes and natural codes (not the computer input encoding methods of the 1980s). The former is mostly used for plaintext telegrams, while the latter is a common expression method for cipher codes.

In a natural code, plaintext characters, words, or phrases are replaced in pairs with specific symbols, letters, or numbers to form ciphertext.

So Director Chi 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 idea of ​​the secret message.

After long-term research, he made a surprising discovery: several of these "two-letter combinations" are used particularly frequently.

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

In addition to being used frequently, they are often combined in groups of three, four, four or five, or appear crosswise and upside down.

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

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

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

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

So this excludes the possibility that "MY, HL, GI" are punctuation marks or function words or particles.

According to the method of reductio ad absurdum, there is only one possibility. These big words that appear very frequently are passwords used to represent the ten numbers 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 their combination rules. It will be a matter of time to decipher them one by one.

When Dai Chunfeng heard this, he couldn't help but admire him. Director Chi's deciphering ideas were clear and logical. 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 message cannot be all numbers, but also other text content. According to the military commander's past work experience, this part of the text content is valuable intelligence.

Wei Daming nodded. This was what he admired most about Director Chi. Through statistical means, he collected many Japanese books, magazines, newspapers, and even novels, and he found a pattern.

"Oh?" Dai Chunfeng asked curiously: "What's the rule?"

Wei Daming replied: "Whether it is 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 idea, Director Chi assumed that the most frequently used letter combination was 1, and the lowest frequency was set as 9.

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

In this way, it can be regarded as a preliminary decipherment of three numbers, namely 1, 9, and 0. Once these three reference points are determined, the next step of decipherment can be carried out. "Dai Chunfeng became more and more entranced as he listened. He motioned Wei Daming to sit down and said. Wei Daming bowed slightly, carefully sat on the stool, and explained the rest of the deciphering process.

"Director Chi believes that after every war, the numbers in Japanese secret messages are likely to represent the troop numbers, number of soldiers, guns and ammunition, dates, etc. of both the enemy and ourselves.

The research room used a Japanese military secret message that may involve information about the 102nd Division of the Fruit Army as a breakthrough to verify the previous deciphering results and see if the two-letter combinations representing 1 and 0 are connected before and after.

The answer is as expected, which proves that Director Chi's reasoning is accurate. In this way, the two-letter combination representing the number 2 is also clear, and the remaining numbers are easy to guess.

In addition, the unit number in the message is often followed by a long character or a department character, such as 102 Division Commander or 102 Division Headquarters, thus deciphering two single characters.

However, this piecemeal method of deciphering is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, but also prone to errors. Director Chi established a new deciphering method based on Japanese pronunciation.

There are ten case particles in Japanese. Because they are used so frequently, Director Chi quickly found them one by one from the secret messages. Director Chi also guessed related words based on Japanese word usage habits.

For example, at the end of the Japanese military telegram, there is usually the phrase "return call" (please call back). According to the position of the case particle, the secret code representing return, telegram, and begging will be clear.

Along this line of thinking, by analyzing the Japanese secret messages at the same time and in the same space, we can also obtain words with common characteristics. "

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

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

Summarize, summarize, and find patterns.

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

On the other side, Wei Daming said that through the above-mentioned deciphering methods, Director Chi discovered that the secret codes of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs mostly started with LA, referred to as "La Code", which contained a variety of code words representing international relations.

"The west wind is tight" means tense relations with the United States;

"Northern Sunny" means the easing of relations with Red Russia;

"There is rain in the southeast" means that the battlefield in the Republic of China is tight;

"The daughter returns to her parents' home" means to evacuate overseas Chinese.

The great success of the Research Office of the Ministry of Military Affairs in deciphering Japanese secret messages attracted the attention of Wei Daming, and the two parties began to cooperate. The two organizations exchanged intelligence and findings many times, and the government's decipherment of Japanese secret messages became more and more in-depth.

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

1. The Imperial Government decided to take decisive measures in accordance with the Imperial Council, and the plan was codenamed "Z".

2. After the success of Plan Z, the embassy immediately burned all kinds of code books, leaving only ordinary code books, and burned all confidential documents.

3. Notify the relevant depositors as much as possible and transfer the embassy funds to a neutral national bank.

After seeing the secret message, Director Chi and Wei Daming thought of one thing. Before the "Battle of Songhu", the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had sent a secret message to the Japanese consulates in China, ordering the consulates in China to burn the code books.

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

There are two pieces of evidence.

First, after May 1941, there was a sudden increase in the number of confidential messages between the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate in Honolulu, and the content changed from trade content about Japanese expatriates to information with increasingly higher levels of confidentiality.

Second, these secret messages contained a large amount of military information. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the consulate many times on which day there were the most warships in Pearl Harbor, and the reply was Sunday.

Through countless mixed intelligence, Director Chi and Wei Daming analyzed that the Japanese army was about to attack Pearl Harbor, probably 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, looking at Lao Dai with amusement, "Daishan" company has made such a great contribution, the bureau should show something.

Dai Chunfeng thought about it for a long time, first drew a few big cakes to trick Wei Daming away, and then went to the Huangshan official residence to report the matter to someone, but someone didn't care after learning about it.

He laughed at himself and said that with the arrogance of Americans, even if the evidence was put in front of them, the other party would not believe that the government had the ability to decipher Japanese secret messages.

This is also true. When the U.S. Secretary of State received the "early warning" intelligence from the Republic of China, he didn't even want to take a second look at it and threw the telegram directly into the trash can.

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

The staff members laughed loudly and agreed with the remarks of the Secretary of State. Only a few people were worried, but they did not dare to express objections because they were so quiet.

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