The Emperor's Codes

Continuing the tale that began in 'Station X', Smith examines how Japan's codes were broken and explores the consequences for WWII. He tells the stories of John Tiltman, a British soldier turned codebreaker who made many of the early breaks into Japanese diplomatic and military codes; Eric Nave, Australian sailor recruited to work for the British who pioneered breakthroughs in Japanese naval codes; and Hiroshi Oshima, the hard-drinking Japanese ambassador to Berlin whose candid reports to Tokyo of his conversations with Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis were a major source of intelligence in the war against Germany. Many of these revelations have been made possible only thanks to recently declassified British files, privileged access to Australian secret official histories and interviews with an unprecedented number of British, American and Australian codebreakers.