ࡱ> 130 Ubjbjqq 4$eeU  04666666$^ZZo44l`^F 0(TZZ : Extract from Hugh Melinskys A Code-breakers Tale In 1943 Hugh Melinksky was studying Classic at Cambridge while waiting for his call-up to the RAF. Then one day his tutor asked him if he would like to lean Japanese. By answering yes he began an adventure which was to take him right round the world. He was to join the army and serve with the Wireless Units in Australia, at both Brisbane and Darwin, breaking the codes of the Japanese pilots whose masters were then threatening complete domination in the South West pacific. He was at the recapture of Borneo, and the Philippines, Delhi and Singapore all feature on his itinerary. It fell to him to translate for General MacArthur the first japans radio news reports of the new-type bomb which had fallen on Hiroshima. When he finally returned to Britain in 1946 he found his army record completely blank; no one knew what he had been doing for three years! I never intended to learn Japanese, or go out to the Far East. Come to that, I never intended to join the army. My main interest was in aeroplanes and flying, and that indicated the Air Force. In 1942 I was eighteen and in the sixth form at Whitgift School, Croydon. The war had been going on for two and a half years and the royal Air Force had lost a lot of pilots and aircrew. A senior officer came round to the school to recruit some new ones, and I, with half a dozen others, asked for an interview. I remember his asking me some mathematical questions, most of which I got wrong, but that did not seem to matter too much because at the end he handed me a piece of paper stating that I was an accepted volunteer for aircrew duties (pilot), subject to a medical examination. I had to produce this form when I was called up at nineteen. I won an Exhibition to Cambridge in classics and I was allowed to go up for a year because the university was nearly empty. Most of the friends I made there were either conscientious objectors or medically unfit one of the latter died in 1996 at the age of seventy-five! In 1942 I went up to ͨs College, Cambridge, for a year because I was too young to be called up for the R.A.F., and continued my study of Greek and Latin. One day in th4e spring of 1943, I went to my tutor to have my Greek composition marked. He sat in his comfortable chair, looking like a well-fed pussy-cat, and said, Oh, by the way, before we begin, would you like to learn Japanese? They are very short of people who can translate it. I nearly fell through the chair, but managed to say, What would I have to do? He replied, Youll have to have an interview. If youre accepted youll train for six months in this country and then probably g out to the Far East in the army. I thought this sounded interesting and replied, Im prepared to try anything once. So I had an interview with Colonel Tiltman from the War Office department M.I.8. He asked me if I played chess, and I said I didnt; or did crossword puzzles, and I said I did; or could read music, and I said Reasonably; and other questions which at the time seemed odd, but which later I understood. He said that I would hear from him, and I told him about the Air Force offer, but he said Dont bother about that. So I started by summer holiday. Half way through, on a day when i was sunbathing in the garden, a telegram arrived telling me to report to the Inter-Services Special Intelligence School at Bedford on the last day of August. So began the six months hardest work of my life. There were thirty of us in the class (twenty-nine men and one woman) who had all done Greek and Latin at Oxford or Cambridge and so they thought we could tackle Japanese. We worked every day from nine till five, and Saturday mornings, and every evening we had to learn a dozen or so new words and characters .... We even had to work ͨmas morning. p.36 In the middle of June 1944, six weeks after arriving at Brisbane, I was posted to No. 2 wireless Unit, Royal Australian Air Force, in, or rather near Darwin ... We had a teletype line to Brisbane (which was like a typewriter on a telephone line) and every message we received was sent down to Capt. Nave. This land-line was not secure since anyone could tap into it, and so every one of our messages had to be enciphered by out unit and then deciphered at Central Bureau...Life was very busy when I arrived, with over a hundred messages a day. p.56 On the way to Singapore from New Guinea is the large island of Borneo, vital to the Japanese as a rich source of oil. I was to take part in a sea-borne invasion of part of the island with a detachment of no. 4 Wireless Unit. p.67 General MacArthur was making plans for the final invasion of Japan on the Southern island of Kyushu (target date 1st November) , and we were told that we were going to be the only non-American unit involved...On August 6th an American bomber dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, wiping out the whole city centre and killing some seventy thousand people, many of them women and children. We knew nothing about this weapon; the secret had been well kept. Our wireless operators picked up the official war report from the Domei News Agency, and I had to translate it for General MacArthur. I still remember the words shingata bakudan which I took to mean new-type bomb, for the Japanese did not know what had hit them. The word shingata was not in the dictionary, and my doubt was finally dispelled fifty years later in a television programme celebrating the anniversary of V-J day. Taking part was a Japanese lady of about my age who was the daughter of a high government official at the time. She said she vividly remembered the announcement about the bomb, quoting it in Japanese, and then giving the translation. p.94 I wrote my own discharge on 11th September, but had paid leave until 2nd October when it was time to go back to Cambridge. Which is where this tale began, three years and forty-six thousand miles ago. 45 p =>~Z[7Uǿǿǿǿhh~hh~H*hh~h4hg|h*"h[hVh Ch(Ch}'hy6 h}'6hyhy6hy5 [7<#U21h:pV. 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