(USS Nevada entering dry dock, 18 Feb 1942 near the 14th Naval District HQ and CIU/Station HYPO. Official Navy Photo.)
 
My ears perked up. “So you went to work for him?” I made a note on the napkin in front of me, nearly knocking over the wineglass, which was wedged against the plates and cloth napkins and silverware we don’t use to eat the snacks. “At the Fleet Radio Unit- Pacific?”
 
“No,” said Mac with mild irritation, as though he was talking to a slow-learner. “We were known as the Combat Intelligence Unit, the CIU. No, Joe Rochefort just said “Welcome Aboard, Ensign. He knew that I didn’t have any Japanese language training or expertise with the IBM ECM Mark III ppunh-card tabulating machines. CDr Rochefort gave me over to Jasper Holmes, and I started to make files.”
 
“Files?”
 
“Yes. Ditto files. Do you know what that is?”
 
“Like mimeograph machines? I remember those from grade school. And the smell.” I wrinkled my nose with the memory.
 
“Our fingers were purple at the end of the day from the fluid. I will get to how we eventually got inside the Japanese code system, but I need to explain how this all worked.”
 
I nodded. “That would be useful,” I said and winced as I bit into a spring roll that was still blazing from the hot oil of the wok in the kitchen. Damn, those things are tastey.
 
“The Japs had introduced what we called the JN–25 code system in mid-1939. It consisted of about 33,000 words, phrases, and letters and was the primary code they used to send military, as opposed to diplomatic, messages. After Pearl Harbor, the CIU focused on cracking that code, though we also had success with a lower-grade code the used for controlling their merchant ships. That is what we gave to the submarine force.”
 
“When did the CIU get into the code?” I asked, swirling a little of the dry white wine in my mouth to assuage the burn. I noticed there were some very attractive women at the bar, concentrating exclusively on one another and I wondered if Willow was attracting the lipstick lesbian crowd. If it was, I was all in favor of it.
 
“CIU had some success starting the month before I got there, in January. But it was hard. That is why the files were so important. But let me explain the way it worked. OP-20-G was the staff number assigned to the Code and Signal Section of the OpNav staff at Main Navy back in Washington. It changed to the Radio Intelligence Section the month I was welcomed aboard. We were station HYPO, named for the first letter in Hawaii. Station CAST was on Corregidor Island in the Philippines, and so on. NEGAT was at the former girl’s school on Nebraska Avenue in Washington. There were over seven hundred people assigned to the effort.”
 
“Was it NEGAT that got the “East Wind Rain” message that signaled the attack?”
 
Mac snorted. “There never was an East Wind message. That is all nonsense. Commander Safford was the only one who testified that he got it, and that was after the war in the testimony to Congress about who was responsible for the Pearl Harbor attack.”
 
“OK, I know the target code, and the big issues. I am interested in what it was like to work at HYPO and what you did, how you got around, what the hours were like. You know, what it was like to be at war with the Japanese looking invincible.”
“Well, to do that I will have to tell you about how I made a Frankenstein sedan, and a little about Jasper Holmes, who had quite a career writing for the Saturday Evening Post.”
 
I knew it was time to get a fresh napkin, and waved past the pretty ladies to Peter to see if I could get some more wine.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com <http://www.vicsocotra.com>

Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Subscribe to the RSS feed!