Breaking the Code

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, April 2012; written by Tammy Dinsmore

I have my friend and coworker Anita, to thank for recommending “Breaking the Code: A Father’s Secret, A Daughter’s Journey, and the Question that Changed Everything” by Karen Fisher-Alaniz.

During her father’s eighty-first birthday celebration, at her parent’s home, the author is taken aside by her father and handed two binders. Asking what they are, her father replies, “Letters. I wrote them to my folks during the war. You can throw them in the garbage or burn them if you want. I don’t care.” She is astonished. And she is unsure as to why he decided, after sixty plus years, to hand the binders to her. Her father is reluctant to answer any questions about the letters.

Growing up, she and her siblings had heard stories about his time in the Navy during World War II, but they were pretty general stories. Stationed at Pearl Harbor a few years after it had been bombed, the stories he told in his letters, and then later told his family after he came home, were about going on liberty and exploring the Island or going to the movies. Any parts he played in battles or intelligence operations were never mentioned.

For several weeks, after her own family goes to bed, she stays up reading her father’s letters. Then she decides to transcribe the letters so that her children can each have copies of the letters. The handwriting is small and sometimes hard to read, so she again starts asking her father questions about his time at Pearl Harbor, but only occasionally does he offer any answers, sometimes with a story, other times saying he doesn’t recall writing that in his letter.

During this time her father has started having nightmares. He has become agitated and has started yelling at his wife for pretty insignificant things. Of course his family is concerned and they seek help from many different people.

Over the course of several years, the real story starts emerging. Her father was involved in Navy Intelligence and was one of a few men assigned to break a code in the Japanese language of Katakana. He tells about being on a sub at Iwo Jima copying and translating code and then doing the same thing at Okinawa, where a good friend of his dies in his arms. Of course, during a war, a person does not have the time to grieve the loss of someone. In her father’s case he had to move on and do his job, making it impossible to say goodbye to his friend.

This story deals with so many different issues. There is the father-daughter relationship, which had been strained, but no one really knows why. It also deals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which her father still suffers from.

Some of the things the author talks about reminded me of my own father and how he coped with his war experiences. I really liked this book. I highly recommend it.