HMS Pembroke V, Alias Station X, Alias Bletchley Park

Abstract

Bletchley Park absorbed most of the graduates of the Bedford Japanese School but could never get enough Japanese linguists. Consequently, the Naval Section and the Air Section began running their own Japanese courses within Bletchley Park: after the elimination of Italy from the war, Italian linguists working at Bletchley Park were given crash courses in naval Japanese by John Lloyd, who had worked for the British consular service in Japan. It was at Bletchley Park that the dispatches of the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, General Ōshima Hiroshi, were deciphered and translated. Ōshima was a personal friend of Hitler and was extremely well informed on Hitler’s intentions and was unaware that his extensive dispatches to Tokyo were being intercepted and read in London, thanks to the breaking of the Japanese diplomatic cypher machine by American codebreakers.