Code Breakers (Allen and Unwin), by Craig Collie

During World War 2, when the Japanese threatened to dominate Papua New Guinea, two secret Australia-based organisations worked to break Japan’s military codes.

This, according to the publisher, is the largely untold story of the people who cracked the codes. These brilliant and idiosyncratic cryptographers came with not unexpected notable achievements in mathematics, but some were experts in classic literature and others had lived in Japan. They patiently unravelled the codes in the Japanese signals and ultimately played crucial roles in the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, as well as general Douglas MacArthur’s push into the Philippines.

An intercept station in Queensland brought about the end of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet in the Pacific.

The code breakers deciphered information about Yamamoto’s travels, and his plane was shot down.

Collie is also the author of the highly acclaimed The Path of Infinite Sorrow: The Japanese on the Kokoda Track.