Chinese Advance Knowledge of Pearl Harbour Attack

[BlueMoon1945]

Hi,

I've been trying more sources in English that cover China's knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbour. According to whatever available information reported in English, Chiang Kai Shek appeared to have tried to warn the US with his intelligence, but the US ignored the information provided by China.

https://www.scmp.com/article/742217/bel ... time-codes
http://www.china.org.cn/china/parade/20 ... 8320_2.htm

There is more information about the cryptographer who broke the Japanese code in Chinese. I think he probably worked with Herbert Yardley in Chongqing and I would have thought he would deserve more recognition if what is written about him is true.

https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%B1%A0% ... B2/9777960

Does anyone have any information about him and his code-breaking achievements during World War 2?

[manfredzhang]

Pure Chinese masterbation…

Had the Chinese been able to decode the Japanese miitary communication, they wouldn’t have been beaten shit.

Reality is the other way around. Japanese forces were largely successful to decode Chinese military communication.

[Carl Schwamberger]

These articles refer to the same messages US code breakers also translated the same dates. The US had broken the Japanese diplomatic code in the early 1920s. Then it was used to gain a advantage in negotiations of the Washington Naval Treaty. Reading this particular message, plus information from the British and the Philippines about Japanese fleets heading south towards Maylasia on 6 December resulted in the last War Warning message to Hawaii & the Philippines. The infamous late message that arrived after the bombs were falling.

Japan used a large number of codes and encryption systems Stripp in 'Codebreaker in the Far East' identifies 24 he & his coworkers attacked 1942-1945. Smith in 'The Emperors Codes' comes up with a similar count. Many of those were low grade items, such as Army tactical codes, or administrative traffic. The Water Transport code used by the Army to coordinate cargo shipping at sea was one such low grade code. A few like a Army code or encryption system were never broken. The radio message traffic between senior army HQ remained opaque to the Brits & probably US to the end.

The Chinese had like everyone else been composing and breaking codes since the dawn of history & had a fairly sophisticated tradition. The main obstacle to them in 1941 was a unfamiliarity with the new mechanical encryption devices like the Enigma machine, the SIGABA, or TYPEX. In this they were hardly alone, Like everyone else the Chinese were also unfamiliar with the advanced statistical analysis techniques that were just emerging. The Poles stumbled into that field in the 1920s when Polish insurance arcturialists were hired by the Polish signals intelligence service to study the Enigma encryption. Theres no reason Chinese codebreakers could not have been reading a portion of the Japanese radio messages. The Japanese diplomatic code was a high grade system, but it is possible the US assisted the Chinese in return for copies of the decoded messages arriving at the US embassy for analysis & forwarding to Washington.

Yardley was brilliant, and also a bit unstable. He blew a great future in US Naval intelligence through his inability to get along with his peers and supervisors. He also was old school and like his peers the Freidmanns had trouble adapting to the high power statistical techniques and mechanical tools emerging in the 1930s & 1940s.

[dgfred]

Thanks Carl. Hope you are well.

[BatEater]

You’re linking to SCMP and a Chinese govt website, both of which are pure communist propaganda.

[manfredzhang]

You’re linking to SCMP and a Chinese govt website, both of which are pure communist propaganda.

SCMP in recent years seems quite opposite to the official Chinese Government's POV. Guess that's part of the reason why Xi gave Yun Ma a hard time...