Code Breakers

At the height of World War II in the Pacific, two secret organizations existed in Australia to break Japan's military codes. They were peopled by brilliant and idiosyncratic cryptographers, including some knowledgeable in mathematics and the Classics and others who had lived or grown up in Japan. These men patiently and carefully unraveled the codes in Japanese signals, ultimately playing a crucial role. But this is more than a story of codes. It is an extraordinary exploration of a unique group of men and their intense personal rivalries and loathing. It is the story of a fierce international and inter-service political battle for control of war-changing intelligence between a group of cryptographers based at the Monterey apartment block in Melbourne's Albert Park and General MacArthur's counter group headquartered in suburban Brisbane. What happened between these two groups would have consequences for intelligence services in the years to follow. Code Breakers brings this surprising and very secret world and the men who operated in it to rich life for the first time.