Abstract
By 1938, as William Friedman and his team started on the work that led to their most spectacular cryptanalytic success, Herbert Yardley got on a ship and 2 months later ended up in Chungking, China, the wartime headquarters of the Nationalist Chinese government. He was there to create a cryptanalytic school and to decrypt Japanese Army codes and ciphers. The Chinese wanted him to do again what he had done in 1917 and 1919 for the US Army. Yardley succeeded, but at a cost to his health. Back in Washington in 1940, he did the last piece of cryptologic work he would do for the American government detailing his 2 years in China. In May 1941, Yardley was approached by two representatives of the Canadian government to help them create their own cryptanalytic organization. He was in Ottawa by June and created his third cipher bureau for the Canadians and had success in reading German and Vichy French messages. However, Yardley’s past caught up with him, and he was out of cryptologic work again in less than a year.
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Notes
- 1.
Yardley called General Dai Li, “The Hatchet Man.”
- 2.
Major Sin-ju Pu Hsiao, “Hsiao to HOY Re: Invitation to China,” May 18, 1938, Edna Yardley Papers, National Cryptologic Museum Library, Ft. Meade, MD.
- 3.
In his posthumously published memoir about his time in China, Yardley uses the name Ling Fan for his Chinese translator. Herbert O. Yardley, The Chinese Black Chamber, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983), xxv.
- 4.
Yardley, Chinese Black Chamber, xv.
- 5.
David Kahn, The Reader of Gentlemen’s Mail: Herbert O. Yardley and the Birth of American Codebreaking (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 190.
- 6.
Yardley, Chinese Black Chamber, 19–20.
- 7.
Kahn, ROGM, 192.
- 8.
Kahn, ROGM, 193.
- 9.
Kahn, ROGM, 191.
- 10.
Herbert O. Yardley to Edna Ramsier, “HOY to Edna Ramsier,” October 27, 1938, David Kahn Collection, Box Y, Folder China, National Cryptologic Museum Library, Ft. Meade, MD.
- 11.
Kahn, ROGM, 193.
- 12.
Kahn, ROGM, 195.
- 13.
Yardley, Chinese Black Chamber, 59.
- 14.
Theodore H. White, In Search of History: A Personal Adventure, (New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), 75–76.
- 15.
Emily Hahn, China to Me, (Philadelphia, PA: Blakiston Company, 1944).
- 16.
Kahn, ROGM, 195–196.
- 17.
Kahn, ROGM, 197.
- 18.
Herbert O. Yardley, “Progress Report to General Dai Li,” Progress Report (College Park, MD: National Archives, Herbert Yardley Collection, RG 457, Box 56, Folder Memoranda and Letters Concerning H. O. Yardley, 1919–1940., March 1940); Kahn, ROGM, 198.
- 19.
Yardley, Progress Report; Kahn, ROGM, 198.
- 20.
Yardley apparently did not know that by this time Edna was already working as a clerk in Friedman’s SIS.
- 21.
Kahn, ROGM, 197.
- 22.
“ACoS, G-2 to China Military Attache Re: Yardley,” March 13, 1940, Herbert Yardley Collection, RG 457, Entry 9037, G-2/10039-299, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD. The ACoS at this time was Colonel E. R. W. McCabe.
- 23.
Yardley, Chinese Black Chamber, 218–219.
- 24.
Frank R. Rowlett, “Oral History of Frank Rowlett (1976),” Oral History, Oral History Collection (Ft. George G. Meade, MD: National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, 1976), 82–84. There has not been any documentary evidence found that Edna Ramsier ever told Yardley anything about the work of SIS during 1940.
- 25.
Rowlett, Oral History, 85–86.
- 26.
Rowlett, Oral History, 86.
- 27.
Rowlett, Oral History, 87.
- 28.
Rowlett, Oral History, 90.
- 29.
Kahn, ROGM, 201.
- 30.
Kahn, ROGM, 201.
- 31.
Gilbert deBeauregard Robinson, “History of the Examination Unit—1941–1945” (Ottawa, Canada: National Archives, 1945), Volume 29,167, National Archives of Canada, 2.
- 32.
Robinson, History, 9.
- 33.
Kurt F. Jensen, Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939–1951, (Vancouver, BC, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2008), 39.
- 34.
Lester Pearson was also a future Canadian Prime Minister and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
- 35.
Jensen, Cautious Beginnings, 39.
- 36.
Kahn, ROGM, 203.; H.S.M. Coxeter would become one of the premier geometers of the twentieth century. Two of his 12 books, Regular Polytopes and Non-Euclidean Geometry, would go into multiple editions. He won the Smith Prize at Cambridge in 1931, joining the ranks of other mathematicians like Arthur Cayley, Alan Turing, and Fred Hoyle.
- 37.
Robinson, History, 12.
- 38.
Wesley K. Wark, “Cryptographic Innocence: The Origins of Signals Intelligence in Canada in the Second World War,” Journal of Contemporary History, Intelligence Services during the Second World War, 22, no. 4 (October 1987): 639–65, https://www.jstor.org/stable/260814, 646.
- 39.
Robinson History, 14; Robinson later wrote in a footnote to his history of the unit: “It should be said in parenthesis here that some of our later difficulties might not have arisen had General Mauborgne remained in office. As it was, he retired almost immediately and his successor had no interest in Yardley.” Mauborgne was put on leave in August 1941 over an administrative matter and officially retired in September 1941.
- 40.
Wark Cryptographic Innocence, 646.
- 41.
Robinson, History, 13–14.
- 42.
Robinson, History, 16.
- 43.
John Bryden, Best-Kept Secret: Canadian Secret Intelligence in the Second World War, (Toronto, Canada: Lester Publishing, 1993), 55.
- 44.
The Abwehr was the German military intelligence service for all of the branches of the German armed forces from 1935 to 1945.
- 45.
Jensen, Cautious Beginnings, 45.
- 46.
Kahn, ROGM, 206.
- 47.
Kahn, ROGM, 208.
- 48.
Robinson, History, 20.
- 49.
Jensen, Cautious Beginnings, 44.
- 50.
The code used to encipher the message contained code words that allowed adjacent digits to be transposed, a basic mistake in code creation. The message sent was “6972 0602,” which decrypted as EME-LEY, rather than the correct “6792 0602,” which decrypted as YARD-LEY.
- 51.
Bryden, Best-Kept Secret, 69.
- 52.
Kahn, ROGM, 208–209.
- 53.
Alaistair Denniston, “Denniston Visit to U.S. Signal Corps, August 1941,” Meeting Minutes (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, RG 457, Historic Cryptologic Collection, Box 949, Folder 2714, August 16, 1941); Kahn, ROGM, 210.
- 54.
Bryden, Best-Kept Secret, 78.
- 55.
Kahn, ROGM, 210.
- 56.
Robinson, History, 20.
- 57.
Kahn, ROGM, 211.
- 58.
Kahn, ROGM, 212.
- 59.
Lester Pearson and Lt. Cmdr. T. H. Little, “Memorandum on a Visit to Washington to Enquire into the Situation Regarding H. O. Osborn,” Memorandum (Ottawa, Canada: National Research Council, November 26, 1941), Volume 29,166, File WWII, part 1, 0235–0243, National Archives of Canada.
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Dooley, J.F. (2023). Yardley Abroad. In: The Gambler and the Scholars. History of Computing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28318-5_16
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