The Emperor's Codes: The Breaking of Japan's Secret Ciphers

From Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, whose devastating loss was due in large measure to our inability to decode messages about the forthcoming attack, to the Battle of Midway, code-breaking played a key role in the Pacific war. Moving across the world from Bletchley Park outside London to Pearl Harbor, from Singapore to Colombo, from Mombassa to Melbourne, The Emperor's Code reveals how the Japanese codes - of which there were several - were broken, and we discover in detail who were the (often quirky) geniuses behind the desperate effort. Unlike the German codes, where similarities of language made decrypting at least possible, the vast differences between English and Japanese made this far more daunting.

Michael Smith has worked for the London Sunday Times, the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph. His books include Foley: the Spy who Saved 10,000 Jews and the #1 bestselling Station X.