TheCodeBreakers
Though the additive had
been changed only two weeks before, on April 1, large portions of it had
been recovered. At FRUPAC, these results had been punched onto cards
for the I.B.M. machines. FRUPAC'S monitors had intercepted the messages
that the 8th Fleet commander had spread on the airwaves, and
when this was fed to the robot cryptanalyst in a form palatable to it, it
swallowed it, digested it to the accompaniment of horrendous clickings
and rattlings, and disgorged the Japanese plaintext.
Because of the many addressees, the "scanners," or traffic analysts,
had probably flagged the message as one of more than ordinary
importance. Hence the plaintext went to a translator of more than
ordinary competence, a 38-year-old Marine Corps lieutenant colonel,
Alva Bryan Lasswell. He had studied Japanese as a language officer in
Tokyo from 1935 to 1938 and had helped with communications-
intelligence activities in Hawaii since May, 1941. The message was
annaabi.ee 
