TheCodeBreakers
Rent, heat, office supplies, light, Yardley's salary of
$7,500 a year, and the salaries of his staff were paid from secret funds.
Though the office was a branch of the Military Intelligence Division, War
Department payments did not begin until June 30, 1921.
One of the organization's first assignments was to solve the codes of
Japan, with whom friction had been growing. Yardley, in an access of
enthusiasm, promised the solution or his resignation within the year. He
regretted his impetuousness as soon as he plunged into the task, for he
almost foundered in the Oriental intricacies of Japanese plaintext, to say
nothing of codetext. After some preliminary study, assisted by Livesey,
who had a great aptitude for languages, he ascertained that the
Japanese employed a watered-down form of their ideographic writing
called "kata kana" for telegraphic and—presumably— cryptologic
communication, which was transmitted in Latin letters. Kata kana
annaabi.ee 
