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14 Reviews

5 star:		(2)
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3.1 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)

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3.0 out of 5 stars Heavy On Detail, Feb 25 2004

By

"camlw1" (Greenwood Village, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Emperors Codes (Mass Market Paperback)

If you want to know every last detail about breaking the Japanese codes, this is the book. If you are looking for a good story, the focus on detail makes the book a ponderous read.

Breaking the Japanese codes during WWII is a fascinating topic and an incredible achievement. The ability to decipher Japanese messages was a key to the allies winning the war in the pacific. I was dissappointed that the author did not elaborate more in telling the story of how the information was used in different circumstances and the corresponding results.

Was this a good read? Yes, I learned a lot that I did not know. However, when the amount of detail got too heavy, I would skim forward.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre : Dragging book, Jun 19 2003

By

Karun Mukherji (Calicut,, India) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Emperor's Codes (Paperback)

I was not happy reading this book.Book breaks no new ground.Author's attempt has been to show the British never lagged behind Americans in penetrating Japanese ciphers.Smith goes to extraordinary lengths to show how understanding was forged among Allies to share special intelligence.However Americans were intially unwilling to share intelligence with their British counterparts.Perhaps the former wanted to corner all military glory.I believe the principal credit for breaking Japanese codes must go cryptanalysts of US Navy.

Following the intricacies of Japanese codes have been a daunting task for me.I feel author ought to have explained this with diagrams or sketches which would have simplified the subject for a lay man like me.Precisely this is what Simon Singh has done in his path breaking work 'Code Book'.Book contains character profiles of leading British code breakers who served in the Far Eastern theatre of war.Author sidetracks a lot giving florid accounts of their personal lives.I found this very dragging.

However there is some interesting information .Nazi leader had a hunch that Normandy would be the site for D day landings although evidence pointed to Pas de Calais.This was known because Anglo-Amercans were reading messages sent Japanese ambassador in Berlin to Foreign office in Tokyo.This fore knowledge helped Allies to fine tune their deception.Other pertains to atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Potsdam declaration by the big Three told Japan to surrender unconditionally.Japan was willing provided Anglo-Americans were willing to respect Emperor's status.Latter accepted this demand Still nuclear bombs were dropped .Why? Author justifiably expresses shock and surprise at this Allied decision.The incident has continued to baffle me to this day.Is Truman and Churchill guilty of perpetrating mass murder?

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4.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Overview Of An Untold Important Aspect of WW II, April 17 2002

By

John Kwok (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

Admittedly Michael Smith does have two important agendas in his book "The Emperor's Codes"; first to tell the largely untold saga of breaking Japanese military and diplomatic codes, and then, to emphasize the important role played by British codebreakers in unlocking these Japanese secrets. On both accounts, Smith succeeds admirably, even if he tends to dwell too much on the anecdotal first hand accounts given by some codebreakers. Smith notes that many of the most important Japanese codes were broken first by Australian and British codebreakers such as Eric Nave and John Tiltman, long before American codebreakers made significant headway in reading encrypted Japanese messages. However, he does not trivialize the important contributions American codebreakers made in this effort, though some readers may wish that Smith gave a more comprehensive overview of American achievements in codebreaking, which would prove to be far more substantial by the war's end. Nevertheless, Michael Smith has made an important contribution in emphasizing the important work done by codebreakers during the Pacific theater of World War Two, which unfortunately has been long overlooked in stark contrast to the well documented history of cracking Enigma and other Nazi codes by both British and American codebreakers.

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Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Moderately Interesting
This is an interesting and journalistic account of Allied efforts to break Japanese codes during WWII. Read more

Published on Jan 22 2002 by R. Albin

5.0 out of 5 stars How the codebreakers actually worked
Plenty of titles have focussed on the breaking of the Nazis' 'enigma' cipher by codebreakers; but this focus on Allied codebreakers who worked on Japanese codes provides many... Read more

Published on Nov 10 2001 by Midwest Book Review