MISTY Mystery Tour

Purple Code

To communicate with overseas consular, the Japanese Foreign Office used the"purple code" invented by the Marine Technical Laboratory, and the “red code”. Apropriately named the Japanese Enigma, it was a sophisticated cipher machine compiled of a plug board, a switch, and 3 parts of a typewriter. In 1940, however, an American cryptology team led by William O. Friedman, used a codebook stolen from the Japanese Consulate General to decipher all the Japanese encryptions.

Spy Sorge's Code

Dressed as a Nazi, the Soviet spy Sorge gathered a countless amount of valuable information through contact with Japanese high officers. Information gathered by Sorge was ciphered by cryptologist Max Klausen and sent to mainland USSR through radio transmission. Klausen was cautious enough to send every message from a different location so that the Japanese secret police would not be able to track down the source. The capture of Sorge’s Japanese conspirator eventually led to the capture of Sorge’s entire organization.

In 1944, Sorge was executed. Klausen was sentenced to life, but rescued by ally troops after the end of the war.

Midway Code

The battle of Midway acted as a turning point in the war of the Pacific. The Japanese Imperial Navy deployed a major part of their mobile unit into this battle to secure control of the region. In addition to the failure of the surprise attack, they encountered an unexpected counter attack that resulted in the loss of four precious carrier vessels. The "Naval Code D (Navy D Code)", used by the Imperial Navy at this time, was extremely complex, but the American army had already gathered a considerable amount of this communication cryptology from a random number table retrieved from a sunken submarine and broke the codes.

This left the Imperial Navy vulnerable to attack and the eventually lead to their defeat in the seas north of the Midway Islands.

The Navaho Code

Although the process of deciphering had become relatively easy with the introduction of cipher machines, ciphering and deciphering messages was still a time consuming task, and the possibility of stolen codebooks made it impractical for use on the battlefield. As a solution, the American army used the language of the Navaho American tribe as their cipher during World War 2. The reason for choosing the Navaho tribe was that, with a population close to 500,000, Navaho’s provided the biggest pool of candidates. It was also known that there were no German scholars that had researched the Navaho language, and that there were practically no outsiders that knew the language. The complicated pronunciations of the language also made it difficult for others to imitate. An entire glossary of military terms was created because the Navaho language contained very few words related to military terms.

The first "code-talkers", as they were known, went ashore with the Marines at Guadalcanal in August 1942, and over 400 Navaho served in the war.

Code breaking by
the Colossus

During the war, the English completed a deciphering computer (programmable electronic computer) named the Colossus in order to decipher Germany’s codes. The Colossus was developed to exploit a cipher used by Hitler and his High Command. Called the Lorenz SZ40, it was a similar system to the Enigma but several times more complicated.

After the war, the blueprints of the Colossus were destroyed in order to protect the English secrets during the war. Related individuals were strictly prohibited to speak and, until recently, hardly anyone knew of its existence.