Chi Buzhou was a code-breaking genius in the history of China’s war effort. He obtained the itinerary of the Japanese Admiral and commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Isoroku Yamamoto, on his tour by means of code-breaking, and reported it to Chiang Kai-shek, who immediately informed the American side in Chongqing and took a fantastic credit for killing Isoroku Yamamoto. However, after the Chinese Communist Party stole the government, he suffered a very miserable ……
On December 7, 1941, during the Japanese raid on the U.S. Pacific naval base at Pearl Harbor, the U.S. destroyer was sunk
As we all know, in World War II, before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s secret telegram was deciphered by Chinese agents, and the information did reach the U.S. President Roosevelt. As to why President Roosevelt did not take any defensive measures after receiving the information, historians have divergent views, so we will not discuss it today. More than 70 years after the victory of the war, we should know who was the person who succeeded in deciphering the Japanese secret messages.
He is the code-breaking genius Chi Buzhou in the history of China’s resistance war.
A passionate young man returned to China with his wife and children to fight the war
In 1908, Chi Buzhou was born in a poor farming family in Fujian Province’s Minqing County and grew up herding cattle. 12 years old, he went to school because his older brother graduated from the Security Officers’ School and the family’s financial situation improved. With his unforgettable high IQ, he finished his studies in just 10 years, which took others 16 years to complete. After graduating from Xiamen University with honors, he was sent to Tokyo University in Japan to study electromechanics for four years, and after graduation, he served in the Chinese Embassy in Japan and married a Japanese girl, and returned to China with his wife and one son and one daughter to join the war effort out of patriotic enthusiasm.
After his return to China, he was introduced by his classmates to the Nationalist Party’s “Central Intelligence Bureau Confidential Unit 2” to do the work of deciphering the Japanese secret code. Chi Buzhou studied electrical engineering and economics, so it can be said that he knew nothing about the code. But he heard his classmates say, “If we can decipher the Japanese secret code, it is equivalent to adding hundreds of thousands of troops in the front.” So he gladly said: As long as I can fight against the Japanese and save the country, I will do whatever I am asked to do.
Ji Buzhou was in the Central Committee, but he was not a member of the Central Committee. In June 1938, Chi Buzhou was ordered to be transferred to the KMT Central Military Commission’s ” The research group was headed by Huo Shizi, and Li Zifeng was the deputy director.
Deciphering Japanese diplomatic codes
The Japanese army’s secret codes, different systems, codes, Chi Buzhou decided to start with the largest number of English secret codes. One night, when he observed a number of English Japanese codes, he found that there were a number of double-word groups that were particularly conspicuous, such as MY, HL, GI ……. After further counting, he found that there were exactly 10 such English double-word groups, which most likely represented the 10 numbers from 0 to 9. Based on the fact that the most frequently used number is “one”, the least frequently used is “nine”, and “0” is rarely found at the beginning of a number, he initially deciphered three numbers: one, nine, and zero. Ikebukuro further envisaged that the numbers in the Japanese coded telegrams were likely to be our army’s unit numbers, number of soldiers and so on. So from the Ministry of Military Affairs to the formation of troops to check the information, finally deduced the “long” “Department” and other words and division names of the code. Then follow the vine, and deciphered part of the relevant words, until the entire message deciphered. In this way, Ikebuju deciphered hundreds of secret messages from the Japanese Foreign Ministry in less than a month. This is equivalent to the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s secret code book, to the hands of Chi Buzhou!
Japan has long been deliberate to invade China, in the development of secret code level is far ahead. Throughout the war, the Japanese army, navy and air force secret codes, one has not been deciphered by the Chinese. If there was no diplomatic code deciphered by Chi Buzhou, then the Chinese Japanese code deciphering, is a blank. Rarely, Chi Buzhou can through the diplomatic code, turn the corner to understand the dynamics of the Japanese army, to get a lot of valuable information.
Deciphering the “Pearl Harbor attack” coded messages
From May 1941, the number of telegrams related to Pearl Harbor gradually increased, mainly the consulate to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report the time and pattern of warships and aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor, the activities of military personnel, as well as information on the meteorological aspects of Pearl Harbor. Such telegrams, instead of directly stating the month and date of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, were spoken in coded language. After studying many secret messages, Ikebukuro basically grasped the meaning of these coded messages. It was not until December 1, 1941, that he deciphered a telegram from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United States that contained the code word “East Wind, Rain,” indicating that the situation was tense and war was about to break out. Ikebuju reported to Director Huo Shizuko and made the judgment that the Japanese were going to have military operations at Pearl Harbor in the near future. Ikebusu also made a very accurate judgment that the date of the Japanese operation would be around the first Sunday of December, based on information from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which repeatedly asked the American troops at Pearl Harbor how they would spend the holiday weekend. Huo Shizi then wrote out the judgment and reported it all the way to Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-shek ordered that the information be forwarded to Roosevelt through the U.S. Embassy in China.
(In addition, it is said that Jiang Yiying, a female translator of the military junta, also deciphered the top secret information about the Japanese sneak attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor at the same time, and she immediately handed this information to Dai Gan personally, who was extremely excited and immediately forwarded the telegram to Chiang Kai-shek. (As to who it was, there is still a debate.)
The “YAMAMOTO 56” was killed
In April 1943, he prepared for a naval and air battle with American forces in the Solomon Islands under his personal command. For the purpose of fieldwork, Isoroku Yamamoto decided to go on a special tour by special plane. There were two telegrams regarding the schedule of Yamamoto Isoroku’s tour, one tapped with a secret naval telegram to notify the place of arrival, and one tapped with a diplomatic code to notify the Japanese mainland. The latter code was intercepted and deciphered by Ikebuju. At 6:00 a.m. on April 18, 1943, Yamamoto and his staff took off in two planes, escorted by six fighters, and were about to reach their first destination at Balal Airfield when they were suddenly attacked by sixteen U.S. Air Force fighters and crashed into the primeval forest. The next day, the Japanese army found the wreckage of the plane, and Yamamoto fell down next to the wreckage with his “Tsukiyama” saber in hand.
In addition, Ikebukuro also repeatedly made miraculous achievements. Once, Sun Ke will go from Chongqing to foreign business, the Japanese side secretly ordered the Japanese aircraft to intercept in the middle. This secret message was deciphered by Chi Buzhou and immediately informed Sun Ke. Sun Ke immediately returned quietly. Later, the plane was indeed shot down by a Japanese plane in the middle of the journey.
After 12 years of arrest, he was finally buried in his homeland.
At the end of the war, Chi Buzhou opposed the civil war and did not want to continue to serve Chiang Kai-shek, so he returned to his hometown of Fujian Minqing in the autumn of 1946 with his wife and children to farm and serve his mother. In order to make a living, in June 1948, Chi Buzhou came to Shanghai with his wife and children, and served as the chief treasurer of the Shanghai branch of the Central Cooperative Bank. On the eve of the fall of Shanghai, he refused to retreat to Taiwan with Chiang’s army and worked as a clerk in the savings department of the Shanghai branch of the People’s Bank of China as a “retained officer”.
In April 1951, a nationwide campaign to “suppress counter-revolution” was launched, and on the day of the “April 27th arrest” in Shanghai, Chi Buzhou was arrested for “resisting the registration of reactionary party members”. He was imprisoned. Two large boxes of secret translations of telegrams, which he had treasured for many years, were also copied away as “incriminating evidence”. On January 25, 1952, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison, and the first of his crimes was “working in the secret service organs of the Central Committee to decipher secret telegrams during the war”. He was not released from prison until May 1963, when he returned to Shanghai. Three years later, the unprecedented “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” began, and he was hit again until the “Gang of Four” was defeated and he was “liberated”.
In March 1983, Chi Buzhou met Li Zhifeng and Huo Shizi, his top bosses, in Shanghai. The two octogenarians also went through a difficult time, one proving that although he was in the Central Committee, he had not been a member of a secret service organization; the other proving that what he had done back then was for the anti-Japanese cause and was good for the nation. On April 12, 1983, the Shanghai High People’s Court completely rehabilitated him.
In his later years, Ikebusu accompanied his wife to Kobe, Japan, but he always maintained his Chinese nationality. In February 2003, at the age of 96, Ikebusu passed away in Kobe. In accordance with his wish to return to his homeland and be buried in his homeland, his ashes were sent back to China for burial.
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