TheCodeBreakers
Army. They denounced the naval disarmament treaties and began an
almost frantic ship-building race. Nor did they neglect, as part of their
war-making capital, their cryptographic assets. In 1934, their Navy
purchased a commercial German cipher machine called the Enigma; that
same year, the Foreign Office adopted it, and it evolved into the most
secret Japanese system of cryptography. A variety of other cryptosystems
supplemented it. The War, Navy, and Foreign ministries shared the
superenciphered numerical HATO code for intercommunication. Each
ministry also had its own hierarchy of codes. The Foreign Office, for
example, employed four main systems, each for a specific level of
security, as well as some additional miscellaneous ones.
Meanwhile, the modern-style shoguns speared into defenseless China,
sank the American gunboat Panay, raped Nanking, molested American
hospitals and missions in China, and raged at American embargoes on
oil and steel scrap