48

Radio silence

Around Tarlac, the roads were no longer military highways thrumming with the movement of troops, and were becoming once again the quiet back roads used by local farmers and townspeople. The vast populations of American personnel who had been amassed for Operation Downfall departed for Japan or returned on transports back to the United States.

Central Bureau stayed at Tarlac, remaining operational to monitor the Japanese demobilisation, but before long there was little radio traffic to intercept. It was a welcome change from the relentless 24-hour cycle during wartime — but as the intercept operations wound down, nobody had anything to do. The senior officers tried to keep them busy by putting them to work on non-signals-related tasks such as helping army engineers to build a road.

Three of the traffic analysts — Bill Rogers, Hugh Dunn, and Peter Elkin — came up with the idea of starting a newspaper. All the Australians stationed in the Philippines were starved of news from home. But the intercept stations were still operating, and could be tuned to pick up news broadcasts from afar, which could then be used in their newspaper. The three of them met with Mic Sandford in the control hut, and explained the idea to him. He replied that he didn’t have a problem with it, and gave his permission. And so the newspaper Union Jack Up! was born, providing news for the campsite. Union Jack Up! came out once a week. There were six issues published, which they distributed by driving around the campsites in a jeep.1 Bill Rogers kept a copy of each issue, donating them many years later to the Australian War Memorial, where they can be viewed today.

On 9 October, the Australian contingent at Tarlac departed for home, boarding the liberty ship, Francis N. Blanchet, a ‘rickety craft with cracks in the hull’.2 The ship was in poor shape. Additional toilets had been hastily fitted out to accommodate the large number of passengers, but their construction was unfinished. It was the only transportation back to Australia, so they all crowded on board. A few lucky individuals had alternative transport: some members of 6 Wireless Unit scored flights home with the RAAF, and a small Central Bureau contingent were selected for an assignment in Japan.

In addition to the Australians at Tarlac, there were over one thousand United States army personnel, many of whom were also stranded as they awaited demobilisation. Before departing for Tokyo, Abe Sinkov gave the remaining Americans at Tarlac an assignment to keep them busy. He instructed them to collectively compile a book about their wartime experiences.

Many of them had collected newspaper cuttings and taken photographs of the various locations; these were contributed to the work, which was titled SIS in the Far East (or alternatively, Special Intelligence Service in the Far East, named after the United States army component of Central Bureau).

The book was printed the following year in New York, with the author and publisher listed as ‘SIS Record Association’, an organisation that did not exist. It was full of photographs of the various locations that Central Bureau had operated in, and of some of the people involved, peppered with light-hearted anecdotes about those places.

The book was unclassified because it revealed no wartime secrets. A casual reader of SIS in the Far East would have no idea what the American personnel of SIS had done in these exotic places. There was no mention of code-breaking or intelligence. It did not even mention the Second World War.

In Brisbane, most people employed by Central Bureau were demobilised in August and early September, except for twelve personnel who remained under Eric Nave’s command. Professor Room and Judy Roe were two of the twelve. Nyrambla was to be returned to its owner, so Nave relocated the remaining staff to Mic Sandford’s former residence at Eldernell Terrace in Hamilton.

Their final task was to compile a set of reports on the activities of Central Bureau, which they would name the Central Bureau Technical Records. In a way, this complemented the book being compiled by the Americans in Tarlac. While SIS in the Far East gave no account of signals intelligence, the Central Bureau Technical Records were only about the signals intelligence.

Of the eleven reports, five dealt with the different kinds of code systems they had attacked: army air-to-ground; naval air-to-ground; three-figure; weather; and Mainline codes (which included Water Transport). There was a report on traffic analysis; on the field sections; on studying code books; and on organisational processes, and there was an overview. The final report was a critique written by Mic Sandford and co-signed by Roy Booth and Abe Sinkov.

The IBMs at Ascot Fire Station were silent, with the technicians led by Zach Halpin preparing to return to the United States. Despite the efforts of both Mic Sandford and Professor Room, the machines could not stay.

Sandford had written to the secretary of defence in March urging the government to approve the purchase of some of these machines, so that the Central Bureau Australian component could be ‘entirely self-contained and independent of US resources’. He acknowledged that Australia lacked the expertise to operate the machines, but suggested that the government ask Canada to lend it some suitable personnel to assist:

It is proposed to approach the Canadian government through the Department of External Affairs, to ascertain whether they would make available to Australia the necessary personnel, to attachment to the AMF [Australian Military Forces], for as long as Australia requires them.

Sandford helpfully attached an itemised shopping list, which included several machines as well as 40 million punch cards.3

At about the same time, the director of military intelligence, John Rogers, wrote to the chief of the general staff supporting Sandford’s position, and further emphasising how important it was that Australia invest in this new technology.

The acting minister agreed on two conditions; first, that the exact cost of purchase be established, and second that he could be assured that Australia would have the expertise to use them. Zach Halpin confirmed to his Australian Central Bureau colleagues that, sure, he would be happy to train the Aussies to use the IBMs. This news was relayed to the chief of the general staff in May.4

Professor Room was particularly intrigued by the machines and their ability to perform computations. He made enquiries about the possibility of Sydney University acquiring one or more such machines — perhaps those being used at the fire station, if the United States army had no need for them.

From a bureaucratic point of view, the machines were now orphaned. The United States army had written off their large investment in Central Bureau, Brisbane. Their office complained that they had originally expected to spend about 150,000 Australian pounds on equipment, but had instead spent over 2 million pounds, the biggest expense being the IBMs.5 The money had been spent without going through proper channels, and the United States army didn’t have an inventory of what they’d sent. In theory, they could employ clerks to search through archives of receipts and purchase orders, but this itself would be arduous and time-consuming, so they wrote the equipment off as a loss.

It initially looked like the IBMs would be available for free, but, once the Australian army realised the cost of staffing and running the machines, they lost interest. The minister asked General Blamey for his opinion on the IBMs. Blamey suggested, rather cleverly, that the army go along with Sandford’s request for the time being, keeping in mind that it had the right to cancel the deal once the war was over.6

On 23 August, just over a week after Hirohito’s announcement of surrender, the assistant director of military intelligence, Robert Little, fired off a brief memo:

In view of the recent developments in the war with Japan, it is desired to inform you that the International Business Machines and the operatives therefore will not be required now.7

Sandford didn’t give up. From Luzon, he wrote to Little:

Irrespective of whether or not IBM machines are obtained for use by CB, it is considered absolutely essential to obtain all possible information about the development and application of these machines without delay.

Professor Room has already suggested that the mathematics staff of Sydney University would be interested in technical investigations in this connection, and Major Z Halpin, US Army, would be pleased to offer his services for this purpose.

It is hoped that Major Dennis Ayre (Australian Corps of Signals) will shortly be joining this unit with the purpose of making a study of IBM machines, and it is suggested that with Major Halpin’s co-operation, it may be possible to undertake a course in the maintenance and technical exploitation of this machinery. The installation at Brisbane will be available for use in this connection. It is understood that the US Army will be happy to give us all the assistance they can. 8

Thomas Room’s dreams of organising a training course from the Americans before they departed, so he could understand the machines, were not to come to fruition, despite Mic Sandford’s enthusiastic support.9

Three weeks after Sandford’s letter, Little received a memo from Army Landforces:

ALL IBM MACHINERY NOW REMOVED FROM CENTRAL BUREAU BRISBANE10

Meanwhile, army engineers dismantled the huts at Ascot Racecourse and cleared all the equipment out of Nyrambla, including the TypeX machines in the garage.

At the end of November, the RAAF’s head of intelligence, Group Captain Julius Allain Cohen, convened a secret meeting at Brisbane land headquarters to discuss the disbandment of Central Bureau. Mic Sandford and Roy Booth had both arrived in Brisbane two weeks earlier from Manila via Morotai. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Little had flown from Melbourne for the conference. Eric Nave, currently in charge of Central Bureau’s Brisbane operations, was there to report on the completion of the technical records.11 Wing Commander H.W. Berry of the RAAF was also in attendance. A notable absence was John Rogers, as he had stepped down from his role as Australia’s director of military intelligence a week earlier to return to civilian life.

Minutes of the meeting were taken, but unfortunately only the first page has survived, and it is rather tattered.12 It reveals that the group decided to destroy all of Central Bureau’s records, keeping only the technical records that Nave’s team had recently completed and 50 Ultra decrypts that might be useful for ‘training purposes’ in the future. Nave was assigned the task of selecting 50 suitable messages, and destroying the rest.

It is clear from other official records that the senior officers at the meeting also assigned Nave the task of delivering the technical records by safe hand to the army’s archives in Melbourne. Nave delegated this to Geoff Ballard, who was not at the meeting but had returned from Colombo and was now stationed nearby at army headquarters in central Brisbane. Ballard, no doubt, would have appreciated a work assignment to visit his hometown.13

The intercept units had mostly been disbanded, with some units still in transit to Australia from Morotai, and had not yet been discharged. They decided to keep a single wireless unit going, which would be named 1 Special Wireless Unit, to be based in Darwin, so that the Australian army could maintain and develop the expertise in radio interception acquired during the war.

The identity disks also had to be disposed of, because they referred to units and organisations whose existence was still secret. After the cessation of hostilities, the disks had been collected from personnel stationed in Central Bureau’s sigint and intercept units across the south-west Pacific. Their disposal was Nave’s responsibility, too, as the operational officer in charge. Once that was done, Central Bureau would cease to exist.

A few individuals, including Geoff Ballard and Don Inglis, were retained by the army and were transferred to the Directorate of Military Intelligence, which was now at Albert Park Barracks — the same location as FRUMEL’s home after it was evicted from Monterey Flats.14

On a hot Queensland December day, Nave incinerated all the records, saving only 50, as he had been instructed to do. Thousands of documents went up in flames; load after load of paper wads, all meticulously saved and filed over the previous three years.

Nave faced the question of what to do with the disks. They could not be burned; they would have to be buried. But where?

The AWAS barracks at Chermside, where many of the women at Central Bureau had lived, was now vacant. The main barracks to the north had been converted to a demobilisation area for troops as they arrived in Australia prior to discharge, but as Australian women had not been allowed to serve overseas, the smaller women’s barracks to the south had not been given a similar interim role. Access to the barracks was by a dirt road that passed through a gully and across a cattle-grid, which would have given Nave confidence that the location was sufficiently rural and remote for his purposes.15

The suggestion to dispose of the name tags at the barracks most likely came from Annette Steele, an AWAS sergeant who had helped compile the technical records at Eldernell and was one of the few remaining residents at the Chermside women’s barracks.

Nave, and probably Steele, as well as kana operator Clarrie Hermes, another Central Bureau person still retained, took the identity disks to the Chermside barracks, dug a hole in the ground, and buried them.16 Those who had not yet been discharged were transferred elsewhere for demobilisation.

Nave assigned Hermes to clean out Eldernell and organise its return to its owner. Hermes had been in signals intelligence since 1941, when he was trained by Jack Newman as a Kana operator and sent to Darwin. He claimed later that, as he was also physically the last person at Eldernell, he was, in a sense, the ‘first and last’. Hermes cleared out the remaining equipment, locked the door, and headed for Melbourne.17