Summary of Michael Smith's The Emperor's Codes

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The British officer class was reluctant to believe that the good life was about to end. They had always been able to depend on the British to defend them, and they underestimated the Japanese military threat.

#2 The Wrens were in specially built wooden quarters, two sharing a cabin, and each with the luxury of an ensuite bathroom. They had locally employed servants. The work could be tiring, but the servicemen and women were still very relaxed.

#3 The fighting was coming, and the Wrens knew they might get separated. They decided to get married, and four days later, Lillie and Archie Feeney were evacuated to Colombo with the rest of the codebreakers and intercept operators.

#4 The fall of Singapore led to the capture of thousands of Allied servicemen, but John Cox had already been evacuated to Java, as had Geoff Day, while John Watson had sailed for Colombo.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822511682

IRB Media

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Insights on Michael Smith's The Emperors Codes

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The British officer class was reluctant to believe that the good life was about to end. They had always been able to depend on the British to defend them, and they underestimated the Japanese military threat.

#2

The Wrens were in specially built wooden quarters, two sharing a cabin, and each with the luxury of an ensuite bathroom. They had locally employed servants. The work could be tiring, but the servicemen and women were still very relaxed.

#3

The fighting was coming, and the Wrens knew they might get separated. They decided to get married, and four days later, Lillie and Archie Feeney were evacuated to Colombo with the rest of the codebreakers and intercept operators.

#4

The fall of Singapore led to the capture of thousands of Allied servicemen, but John Cox had already been evacuated to Java, as had Geoff Day, while John Watson had sailed for Colombo.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The British had been intercepting the diplomatic communications of their enemies since 1324, when King Edward II ordered that all letters coming from or going to parts beyond the seas be seized. The onset of the First World War brought them more work than they might have previously thought possible.

#2

The British practice of borrowing the cables from the cable companies was the focus of an investigation by the US Senate. The cable companies were eventually forced to hand over all their traffic, which was then copied and returned to them.

#3

The cables handed over by the cable companies were the mainstay of the codebreakers’ work. The telegrams were sorted and copied by a small group of workers borrowed from the Post Office.

#4

The first big test of Hobart-Hampden’s skill was the 1921 Washington Conference, where the nine major powers planned to limit the ratio of their naval ships to ten for every six Japanese vessels. The codebreakers intercepted a message from Tokyo to the Japanese delegation, suggesting that they could have agreed to a 10:6 ratio if they had wanted to.

#5

The British had problems intercepting Japanese messages, as their Morse code was based on pictorial characters rather than phonetic symbols. The Japanese created their own Morse code that was