![]() But you know, when you think some of the things that they did to our POWs and things … it was just a blessing when it was all over. "I suppose we felt sorry for the Japanese, for the ordinary people. Instead, she starts another: "Yes, well, see they tried to kill our boys off in prisoner of war camps and some of them are still paying for it. I know it sounds dreadful but, I mean, when I think of what they did to our servicemen, the dreadful lives that they ended up with because of their cruelty…"Ĭoral doesn't quite finish the sentence. But if it hadn't been them, it would've been us. Terrible business."Ĭoral says she too finds the nuclear attack on Hiroshima confronting to consider. "I don't like the sound of it," Joyce says, adding that the first she'd known about the atomic bomb was when she read it in the newspapers. Joyce was struck particularly by the cable's last line: Please investigate and report any information concerning this new type of bomb. Germans also delivered their messages to occupied territories and enemy states. ( Supplied: Australian Signals Directorate) He covered the Battle of Britain and nightly bombing raids in London. The translated Hiroshima cable was declassified for the ABC documentary Breaking the Code: Cyber Secrets Revealed. The trunk contained sodden code books from the Japanese 20th Army division. While the Allies' ability to decode encrypted Japanese signals had steadily improved, it was aided immeasurably by an Australian sapper's chance discovery of a steel trunk buried in soggy ground by retreating Japanese troops in January 1944 at Sio in New Guinea. The Allies had been split over the strategic wisdom of Operation Vengeance the British believed that in exacting revenge against Yamamoto, the US had risked revealing their joint code-breaking ability which had broader strategic value.ĭecoding Japanese signals had proven valuable in the war against Germany, insofar as Japanese diplomatic cables from Europe helped inform the Allies of Germany's evolving military strategy. ![]() The admiral's death was a blow to Japanese morale but it would be another two and a half years before the war in the Pacific ended. The wreckage of Yamamoto's plane still rusts in the jungle about 9 kilometres from the Panguna copper mine. "They shot the big boy down," Coral says. Ever since America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, the question has persisted: Was that magnitude of death and destruction really needed to end World War II. US fighter planes intercepted Yamamoto's plane over Bougainville, downing on April 18, 1943. "And sure enough, they were waiting for him - our boys, and the Americans - and they got him." "They had everything, the whole lot," Joyce says. The Japanese cable not only detailed the admiral's itinerary, but also the type of Mitsubishi Betty bombers he and his officers would be flying in, as well as the six Mitsubishi Zero fighters that would be accompanying them. ( Supplied: Wikimedia Commons/Government of Japan)Īn Australian wireless unit picked up Japanese radio signals which, when decrypted, revealed that Yamamoto would be visiting troops in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. ![]()
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