Cryptanalytic problems facing the United States in the Pacific prior to
World War II were largely those related to
Japan. An early decision by OP-20-G in Washington divided responsibilities for them among
CAST at
Cavite and then
Corregidor, in the
Philippines, HYPO in Hawaii, and OP-20-G itself in Washington. Other Navy crypto stations, including
Guam and
Bainbridge Island on
Puget Sound were tasked and staffed for signals interception and
traffic analysis. The US Army's
Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) broke into the highest level Japanese diplomatic cypher (called
PURPLE by the US) well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. PURPLE produced little of military value, as the
Japanese Foreign Ministry was thought by the
ultra-nationalists to be unreliable. Furthermore, decrypts from PURPLE, eventually called
MAGIC, were poorly distributed and used in Washington. SIS was able to build several PURPLE machine equivalents. One was sent to CAST, but as HYPO's assigned responsibility did not include PURPLE traffic, no PURPLE machine was ever sent there. The absence of such a machine on site in Hawaii has long been seen by
conspiracy theorists as a reason for US unpreparedness in Hawaii, and/or to be evidence of a conspiracy by high level officials to deprive Pearl Harbor of intelligence known to Washington. However, no hard evidence for any such conspiracy exists.
Japanese naval signals in 1941 and early 1942 HYPO was assigned responsibility for work on Japanese Navy systems, and after an agreement with
Australia, the
United Kingdom and
Netherlands to share the effort, worked with crypto groups based at
Melbourne,
Hong Kong and
Batavia. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the amount of available IJN traffic was low, and little progress had been made on the most important Japanese Navy system, called
JN-25 by U.S. analysts. JN-25 was used by the IJN for high level operations: movement and planning commands, for instance. It was a state-of-the-art
superencrypted code, eventually a two-book system. Cryptanalytic progress was slow. Most references cite about 10% of messages partially (or sometimes completely) decrypted prior to December 1, 1941, at which time a new version of the system went into effect, requiring the cryptanalysts to start again. Although most references did set the limit of the percent of the messages that were decrypted at 10%, they were not privy to the latest information. Wilford in his
Decoding Pearl Harbor: USN Cryptanalysis and the Challenge of JN-25B in 1941, suggests that this view is now untenable and that the JN-25 codes were readable to a great extent and hence, lends "support to the revisionist theories of Toland and Stinnett". After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was considerably more JN-25 traffic as the Japanese Navy operational tempo increased and geographically expanded, which helped progress against it. Hong Kong's contribution stopped until the crypto station there could be relocated (to
Ceylon and eventually
Kenya), but HYPO and the Dutch at Batavia, in conjunction with CAST and OP-20-G made steady progress. HYPO in particular made significant contributions. Its people, including its commander,
Joseph Rochefort, thought a forthcoming Japanese attack early in 1942 was intended for the central Pacific, while opinion at OP-20-G, backed by CAST, favored the North Pacific, perhaps in the Aleutians. In early 1942, in response to the
Japanese advances in the Philippines (which threatened CAST), the possibility of an invasion of Hawaii, and the increasing demand for intelligence, another signals intelligence center, known as
NEGAT was formed in Washington, using elements of OP-20-G. As mid-1942 approached, HYPO was under high pressure, and there are tales of 36-hour stints, of Rochefort working in his bathrobe and appearing for briefings late and disheveled besides. This effort climaxed in the last week of May with the decryption of enough JN-25 traffic to understand the Japanese attack plan at Midway in some, but not complete detail. This allowed Admiral Nimitz to gamble on the ambush that resulted in the
Battle of Midway, the loss of four Japanese carriers and many naval aviators for much lower Allied losses, and what is generally agreed to have been the turning point of the Pacific War. ==Post-Midway transfers and changes==