Herbert O. Yardley: eyewitnessing a legacy

ABSTRACT

A Japanese cryptologist claimed that he attended a meeting between Japanese diplomats and controversial US cryptologist Herbert O. Yardley in 1929 at the Japanese Embassy. Since this eyewitness account has not been previously known to Yardley researchers, it deserves to be reviewed objectively to see if it contributes anything of substance to the further shaping of the Yardley legacy. This article scrutinizes the written evidence as provided in two accounts of the meeting, one of which is recorded in the memoirs of senior Japanese diplomat Kase Toshikazu. The author of this article, who had been skeptical of a Yardley-Japan meeting, now believes that it most likely did occur.

KEYWORDS:

• David Kahn
• Herbert O. yardley
• the American black chamber
• the broken seal
• Kase Toshikazu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Ladislas Farago, The Broken Seal: The Story of “Operation Magic”and the Pearl Harbor Disaster, New York: Random House (1967), 56–60; J. F. Dooley, “Was Herbert O. Yardley a Traitor?” Cryptologia 35, no. 1 (2010): 1–3.

² Dooley, 4–5; National Security Agency, Herbert O. Yardley Document Collection, Memo to D33 from J.R. Chiles, S1, “State Department Messages. 3 January 1968,” Publication Number 6,650,860, https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/Yardley-Collection/, accessed February 22, 2023; Theodore M. Hannah, “The Many Lives of Herbert O. Yardley,” Spectrum [of the National Security Agency] (fall 1981): 26, https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-spectrum/many_lives.pdf, accessed February 22, 2023.

³ Gregory J. Nedved, “The Impact of Herbert O. Yardley: A Glass Half Full,” The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies 28, no. 1 (Winter-Spring 2023), 55.

⁴ Kase Toshikazu, Kase Toshikazu Kaisōroku, Tōkyō: Yamate Shobō, Shōwa 61 (1986), https://lccn.loc.gov/86209603, author’s translated copy; S. Tomokiyo, “Japanese Reaction to Yardley’s The American Black Chamber,” http://cryptiana.web.fc2.com/code/yardley_jp.htm, accessed February 22, 2023.

⁵ Tomokiyo.

⁶ Kase.

⁷ Farago, 56–60; Tomokiyo, Kase.

⁸ Kase.

⁹ Tomokiyo; Kase.

¹⁰ Tomokiyo; Kase.

¹¹ Dooley, 3–4; Herbert O. Yardley Material, Doc. #207, Herbert O. Yardley Collection, Record Group (RG) 457, Box 100, Accession Number 47,079, National Archives, College Park, MD.

¹² Dooley, 12–13.

¹³ Dooley, 4; Hannah, 26; Memo to D33 from J.R. Chiles.

¹⁴ Kase, Farago, 56.

¹⁵ Dooley, 12–13.

¹⁶ Dooley, 12; Kahn, 95; Author correspondence with J.F. Dooley, April 14, 2023.

¹⁷ Kase, Tomokiyo.

¹⁸ Farago, 56.

¹⁹ L. Kruh, letter, Cryptologia 19, no. 4 (1995): 378.

²⁰ “Gregory J. Nedved, “Herbert O. Yardley Revisited: What Does the New Evidence Say?,” Cryptologia 45, no. 2 (2021): 113.

²¹ Author correspondence with J.F. Dooley, April 14, 2023; Nedved, “Herbert O. Yardley Revisited,” 110.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Gregory J. Nedved

Gregory J. Nedved has been a historian at the Center for Cryptologic History since 2011 with a specialty in China. Prior to this, he spent much of his professional career (military and government) working with the Chinese language in various capacities, e.g., analyst, translator, instructor. He has a B.A from Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA) and M.A. from Hawaii Pacific University. He is also a graduate of the Naval War College Fleet Seminar Program and has a Certificate in Advanced Translation from the University of Chicago. He is a two-time winner of NSA’s Cryptologic Literature Award and is the author of many books and articles on topics as diverse as flags to presidential trivial. He also is president-emeritus (2018-2023) of the National Museum of Language.