Belated spotlight on unsung hero who cracked Japan's wartime codes

On December 2, 1941, a young Chinese intelligence officer in a cramped room in Chongqing decoded a message from Japan's Foreign Ministry to its ambassador in Washington: 'Burn all secret codes and secret documents and move the embassy's deposits to the bank of a neutral country: the imperial government has decided at the highest level to take action.'

Knowing the cables that had gone before, the officer concluded that Japan was about to attack the United States five days later at Pearl Harbour. He passed the information to his superior, who gave it to president Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang sent an urgent cable to the US embassy; its diplomats judged that the Kuomintang did not have the technology to crack Japan's secret codes and threw the cable into the rubbish bin.

The officer, Chi Buzhou, was the master code-breaker of China's intelligence during the second world war.

On April 13, 1943, he decoded a cable from the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army saying that Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet and the man who led the attack on Pearl Harbour, would be flying from Rabaul to Ballale airfield, in the Solomon Islands, on the morning of April 18.

This time the Americans believed him and sent a squadron of fighter aircraft to intercept the Mitsubishi aircraft with Yamamoto on board and the six escorting Zero fighters. Yamamoto's plane crashed into the jungle. The death of their most famous admiral was a major psychological blow to the Japanese public, who were only told of the event on May 21.

Chi is one of the most important unsung heroes of China's war effort. Only now is he achieving the recognition he deserves thanks to a popular television series, Feng Yu, based on his life. The series aired on China Central Television's national Channel Eight last month and reached a peak of No 2 in the ratings. Now CCTV is selling it to city and provincial cable stations.