Codebreaker in the Far East

Codebreaker in the Far East is the first book to describe how Bletchley Park and its Indian and Far Eastern outposts broke a series of Japanese codes and cipher systems of dazzling variety and complexity. Their achievements made a major contribution to the Allied victory in Burma, and probably helped to shorten and win the war, perhaps by two or three years. Alan Stripp gives his first-hand account of the excitement of reading the enemy's mind, of working against the clock, hampered by one of the world's most daunting languages and the knowledge that they were facing an unyielding and resourceful enemy who had never known defeat.

This is the first book to detail British wartime successes in breaking Japanese codes. Other veterans of Bletchley Park (GCHQ) have described how they broke the German Enigma machine to produce Ultra intelligence, and how that helped to hasten victory. There have also been accounts of how the US broke the Purple cipher and a naval code, even before Pearl Harbour. The Book, however, chronicles the British achievement at Bletchley Park and in the Far East of breaking Japanese codes of dazzling variety in Burma three months before Hiroshima. This first-hand account shows the magnitude of the task: grappling with one of the world's most daunting languages, learning the skills of cryptanalysis, turning out decrypts against the clock, and weaving together all the strands of intelligence to help vanquish a dogged and resourceful enemy who had never known defeat - in perhaps the worst climate and terrain in the world. It is success story that conveys the sheer excitement of reading the enemy's mind, and contains some surprises: who would have expected Japanese signals to reveal not only what they were up to in Asia but also details of German jet aircraft, the latest U-boats, even Normandy beach defences?

Tours of Duty1: Cambridge, Bedford, and Yorkshire; 2: Bletchley Park; 3: Marching Orders; 4: Delhi; 5: Naini Tal, Agra, and Abbottabad; 6: Bangalore, Singapore, and Cambridge; Japanese Puzzles7: Japanese Codes and Ciphers: what were they like?; 8: What did they tell us?; 9: How were they sent?; 10: How were they intercepted?; 11: How were they broken?; 12: What is so special about signals intelligence?; 13: Loose ends; A Tangled Web14: Clandestine Groups and their Signals; 15: General Slim and Signals Intelligence; 16: Phuket Island; 17: Deception in the Burma Campaign

Alan Stripp is Director of the Cambridge University Summer Schools on British Secret Services. Until the end of the Second World War he worked at Bletchley Park and in Delhi, breaking Japanese codes, before switching to Persian and Afghan codes. He is the editor of Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park (OPB, 1994),