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I was assigned to the 6922 RGM unit from approximately August 1955 to approximately August 1958. I was a Special Security Office Agent moving back and forth from Ashia AB to Itazuke AB as tasks required. I spent most of my time at Itazuke, in the Air Force Special Security Office for the 43rd Air Division. In March 1952, the 43rd Air Division assumed responsibility for the air defense of Southwestern Japan, the western part of Honshu, and most of Shikoku, using radar, fighter aircraft, and ground weapons to prevent or disrupt enemy air attacks. It supported numerous exercises, some involving U.S. and British naval vessels, and training for the Japan Air Self Defense Force. The division also supervised electronic countermeasures (ECM), and weather reconnaissance missions. In the summer of 1957, when the Nagasaki area suffered severe flooding, the 43d assisted Japanese authorities and people by flying numerous airlift missions with helicopters and fixed wing aircraft.The division discontinued and deactivated on Oct. 1, 1957. This unit earned the following organizational service streamers: Korean Service. EmblemA shield argent on a bend azure three futuramic aircraft, in bend, or, between two lightning bolts in saltire gules and a magnetic field of the last with cardinal compass points and pylon of the last. (Approved 19 December 1956)
Components:Wings: Squadrons: Stations:Itazuke Air Base, Japan, 1 March 1952–1 October 1957. Aircraft / Missiles / Space vehiclesF-94 Starfire, 1952–1953; F-86 Sabre, 1953–1957; F-100 Super Sabre, 1957. Commanders:Colonel Charles W. Stark, 1 March 1952; Colonel Edward N. Backus, c. 1954; Colonel Samuel J. Gormly Jr., by 31 December 1954; Colonel James M. Smelley, 9 July 1956; Colonel Ladson G. Eskridge Jr., 13 August 1956–1 October 1957. B, Okinawa.
Shiraki-baru, Japan Viewing the "Main" front gate of Itazuke Air Base. This view is looking into the Air Base from the town of Shiraki-Baru, Japan. The base gym is the tall building on the left. There was a large open mess hall directly across the street from the gym . (This is the way it looked in 1956 thru at least 1960.)
This is a view
of Shiraki-Baru, Japan when standing at the Main front gate of Itazuke looking
out into the town. ![]() USAFSS
Above picture is of me (Frank Hogan) while on one field assignment with the Lieutenant below while we were on an AFSS assignment (traveling between the 6922 Radio Group Mobile at Ashiya Air Base and the 6922 Special Security Office at Itazuke Air Base, in 1958).
USAF Special Security Officer Lt. ???? Above picture is of the lieutenant I worked with. I took this picture of him as we participated in a AFSS field assignment. We were traveling from the 6922 RGM at Ashiya AB to the 6922 SSO at Itazuke AB, in 1958). ![]() I obtained this picture from SSgt Joe Pate
![]() Chinese, Russian,& Korean Linguist, & Hi-speed Buddies
Autodin Mode 5 Terminal (above)
***************************************************************** The entire article below was copied from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KL-7 on 04/26/08 KL-7 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A KL-7 on display aboard HMS Belfast. The TSEC/KL-7, code named ADONIS, was a rotor machine encryption system introduced in the 1950s by the US National Security Agency. It had eight rotors, seven of which moved in a complex pattern. The non-moving rotor was in the middle of the stack. It replaced the SIGABA system developed during World War II. The KL-7 was designed for off-line operation. It was about the size of a teletype machine and had a similar three-row keyboard, with shift keys for letters and figures. The KL-7 produced printed output on narrow paper strips that were then glued to message pads. When encrypting, it automatically placed a space between each five-letter code group. There was an adaptor available, the HL-1/X22, that allowed 5-level Baudot punched paper tape from teletype equipment to be read for decryption. The standard KL-7 had no ability to punch tapes. A variant of the KL-7, the KL-47, could also punch paper tape, allowing direct input to teleprinters.
Each rotor had 36 contacts. To establish a new encryption setting, operators would select a rotor and place it in a plastic outer ring at the correct offset. The rings to use for each position and the offset was specified in a printed key list. This process would be repeated eight times until all rotor positions were filled. Key settings were usually changed every day at midnight, Greenish Mean Time. The basket containing the rotors was removable, and it was common to have a second set of rotors and basket, allowing the rotors to be set up prior to key change. The old basket could then be kept intact for most of the day to decode messages sent the previous day, but received after midnight. The rotor basket had two sets of connectors at each end that mated with the main assembly. One pair of connectors, with 26 pins each, connected to the keyboard and printer. Another pair, with 10 pins each, connected through the mechanism used to control the stepping of the rotors. There was also a micro switch under each movable rotor that was operated by cams on its plastic outer ring. Different outer rings had different arrangements of cams. The exact way all these features worked together is not publicly known, but it is likely they advanced the rotors in a pseudorandom fashion, a design principle that had proved successful with SIGABA. One former KL-7 operator relates that the rotor stepping was independent of the plaintext or cipher text input There was a sliding permutor board under the keyboard that may have been used to switch the input and output of the basket, so that the same rotor setup could be used both to encrypt and decrypt messages.
The KL-7 on display at the USAF Communications Agency museum. Rotors have been removed. The KL-7 was largely replaced by electronic systems such as the KW-26 ROMULUS and the KW-37 JASON in the 1970s, but KL-7s were kept in service as backups and for special uses. In 1967, when John Anthony Walker (a sailor in the US Navy) walked into the embassy of the Soviet Union in Washington, DC seeking employment as a spy, he carried with him a copy of a key list for the KL-47. KL-7s were compromised at other times as well. A unit captured by North Vietnam is on display at NSA's National Cryptologic Museum. The KL-7 was withdrawn from service in June 1983, and Canada's last KL-7-encrypted message was sent on June 30, 1983, "after 27 years of service." The successor to the KL-7 was the KL-51, an off-line, paper tape encryption system that used digital electronics instead of rotors.
Britannica (2005). Proc (2005) differs, saying that, "after the Walker family spy ring was exposed in the mid-1980's (1985)...immediately, all KL-7's were withdrawn from service" ********************************
The TSEC/KW-26, code n amed ROMULUS, was an encryption system used by the US Government and, later, by NATO countries. It was developed in the 1950 by the National Security Agency (NSA) to secure fixed teletype circuits that operated 24 hours a day. It used vacuum tubes and magnetic core logic, replacing older systems, like SIGABA and British 5-UCO, that used rotors and electromechanical relays.A KW-26 system (transmitter or receiver) contained over 800 cores and approximately 50 vacuum-tube driver circuits, occupying slightly more than one half of a standard 19-inch rack. Most of the space in the rack and most of the 1 kW input power were required for the special-purpose vacuum tube circuits needed to provide compatibility with multiple input and output circuit configurations. The military services' requirements for numerous modes and speeds significantly increased costs and delayed delivery. NSA says it is doubtful that more than three or four of the possible configurations were ever used. The KW-26 used an NSA-developed encryption algorithm based on shift registers. The algorithm produced a continuous stream of bits that were xored with the five bit Baudot teletype code to produce cipher text on the transmitting end and plaintext on the receiving end. In NSA terminology, this stream of bits is called the key. The information needed to initialize the algorithm, what most cryptographers today would call the key, NSA calls a crypto variable. Typically each KW-26 was given a new crypto variable once a day.
KW-26 model C; the receiver is at the top, the transmitter at the bottom. Card reader is in upper right of each unit. NSA designed a common fill device (CFD), for loading the crypto variable. It used a Remington Rand (UNIVAC) format punched card (45 columns, round holes). The operator inserted the daily key card into the CFD and closed the door securely, locking the card in place. Decks of cards were created by NSA and sent by courier. The cards were strictly accounted for. Because the KW-26 used a steam cipher, if the same key card was ever used twice, the encryption could be broken. To prevent re-use, the card was automatically cut in half upon reopening the CFD. As the units aged, the card reader contacts became less dependable, and operators resorted to various tricks, such as hitting the card reader cover with a screwdriver, to get them to work properly. Because the KW-26 sent a continuous stream of bits, it offered traffic-flow security. Someone intercepting the cipher text stream had no way to judge how many real messages were being sent, making traffic analysis impossible. One problem with the KW-26 was the need to keep the receiver and transmitter units synchronized. The crystal controlled clock in the KW-26 was capable of keeping both ends of the circuit in sync for many hours, even when physical contact was lost between the sending and receiving units. This capability made the KW-26 ideally suited for use on unreliable HF radio circuits. However, when the units did get out of sync, a new key card had to be inserted at each end. The benefit of traffic-flow security was lost each time new cards were inserted. In practice, operational protocol led to the cards being replaced more often than was desirable to maintain maximum security of the circuit. This was especially so on radio circuits, where operators often changed the cards many times each day in response to a loss of radio connectivity. In any case, it was necessary to change the cards at least once per day to prevent the cipher pattern from repeating. Early KW-26 units protected the CRITICOMM network, used to protect communications circuits used to coordinate signals intelligence gathering. The initial production order for this application, awarded to Burroughs in 1957, was for 1500 units. Other services demanded KW-26's and some 14000 units were eventually built, beginning in the early 1960s, for the U.S. Navy, Army, Air Force, Defense Communications Agency, State Department and the CIA. It was provided to U.S. allies as well. When the USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea in 1968, KW-26's were on board. USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is a Banner-class technical research ship (Navy intelligence) which was boarded and captured by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) on 23 January 1968 in what is known as the Pueblo incident or alternatively as the Pueblo crisis or Pueblo affair. North Korea stated that she strayed into their territorial waters, but the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident. More recently, facts have come to light that indicate that USS Pueblo was captured by North Korea at the instigation of the Soviet Union, which was seeking a cryptographic machine onboard to match with a key provided to the Soviets by the spy John Walker.
The PUEBLO is still held by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) today, remains a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy. North Korean leader Kim Jung II has specified that it be used to promote anti-Americanism. In response, the NSA had modifications made to other units in the field, presumably changing the crypto algorithm in some way, perhaps by changing the shift register feedback taps. Starting in the mid-1980s, the KW-26 system was decommissioned by NSA, being replaced by the more advanced solid-state data encryptor, TSEC/KG-84.
The picture above shows the Offensive Back-Field players of the Itazuke Green Waves 1957, & 1958. I am #19, I played both the Offensive and Defensive End positions. Note, our helmets had no face-guards.
Itazuke Air Base Pool 1955 thru 1963 Itazuke AFB Front Gate - Looking onto the AB Looking into the two of from Itazuke AF Front Gate
Shiraki-Baru Flower Lady and Flower Cart
Looking into the town of Shiraki-Baru from the front gate of Itazuke AFB
C-100 Jets
at Itazuke AFB The above picture taken just outside the Itazuke AB Main Gate,
looking into the town of Shiraki-baru, Japan in 1958, with local
restaurant girls in center view.
(In the above picture the guy on the right last name was Bell. He also played on the Itazuke Green Waves football team. This picture was taken on the main street in Shiraki-baru, near the Blue Room Bar. In many quarter in 1957 and 1958 I was affectionately known as the "Shiraki-ba Honshu".)
The above picture of me was taken in 1954 during my basic training at Lackland AB.
Buddies at the local bar called The Blue Room in town Shiraki-baru, Japan, which is just outside the Main Gate to Itazuke AB, 1958.
Operation of the 6922 SSO at Itazuke end (approx. August 1958). My tour of duty in the AF also ended at that time. enjo-kosai by the most basic definition of prostitution whereby one attains money through the exchange of sexual acts [1], excludes an array of other activities.Prostitution has been illegal in Japan since 1958, but only prostitutes and Pimps were punished, with male customers escaping any penalty from the law. During occupation of Japan Fearing G.I. Occupiers, Japan Urges Women Into Brothels not onle Recreation Association officially was launched on Aug. 28, 1945, two weeks after the Japanese surrender. Its officials gathered in front of the Imperial Palace and swore an oath acknowledging that "this project is a cornerstone in protecting the chastity of Japanese women." The association's internal documents, gathered by a Japanese writer named Akira Murase, who has written a book about the brothels, refer to the prostitutes as "Okichi." It is a term laden with sacrifice and sadness, for Okichi was a 16-year-old girl sent by the authorities in 1857 to be the mistress of the first American consul in Japan. Okichi was reviled by Japanese for her intimacy with an American, and so in despair she drowned herself. Although in 1945 the Government was worried that Japanese prostitutes would not want to stoop so low as to have sex with "satans and savages," economic circumstances were so desperate that many applied. And despite Okichi's misfortunes, apparently the women were not scorned more than other prostitutes. "They were even envied a bit by ordinary people, because they could earn lots of money," said Mr. Ono, the former police official, whose salary then was equivalent to 46 cents a month. "People were obsessed not with race but with how to make a living." The first "comfort station," the Komachien, a huge w ooden traditional building in a Tokyo suburb, opened with 150 kimono-clad women. One woman had 47 American customers the first day, thereby earning almost $2 for herself.The prostitutes, who then ranged mostly between 18 and 25, have long since disappeared. They apparently mostly left Tokyo by the 1950's, never spoke of what they had done, and in many cases died early of the effects of venereal disease or other ailments.The Government role in setting up brothels was less surprising in Japan than it would be in the United States, in that until 1958 Japan permitted prostitution in officially permitted and defined red-light districts. Despite their theoretical ban on prostitution, the American military authorities in at least one area apparently asked the Government to set up a brothel. "A month after the troops landed, an American general came to me and said, 'I need your help,' " remembered Yasuhiro Komatsu, then a 25-year-old liaison officer between the American and Japanese forces in the city of Moji. Mr. Komatsu says that the American general demanded that Japan set up a brothel for his men. As it happened, the Japanese Navy had been running a brothel in one of its buildings in Moji for its own servicemen until the end of the war. So Mr. Komatsu asked the women if they would be willing to have sex with Americans. "They said, "We're scared of the Americans,' " Mr. Komatsu recalled. "But they also said, 'We have no other job so we'll do it.' " So the brothel quickly opened, charging much less than the Tokyo rates. Americans lined up, leaving their shoes at the door, and paying just over a penny per visit. In a few cases, the authorities may have forced Japanese women to work in the brothels. One Japanese book asserts that female factory workers in the city of Kawasaki were trucked to a brothel for Americans and given a speech by a man who said he was from the Interior Ministry."You should be proud to be given this mission," he reportedly told the women, who had been told only that they would work in the tourism business. When one woman tried to escape, she is said to have been beaten and her right eye gouged out. In another case, a women's corps affiliated with the army in Saitama Prefecture is said to have received an order on Sept. 9, 1945, dispatching the members to four brothels in Tokyo. The order, from the Interior Ministry, reportedly said: "You should bear the unbearable and be a shield for all Japanese women." The Recreation Association followed Japanese tradition by setting up separate brothels for American officers, so they would not have to share women with enlisted men, but some officers declined to take part. Operations at the 6922 RGM in Ashiya ceased on 3 November 1958 and the personnel and equipment of the 6922nd RGM was transferred to the 6902nd SCG; however, the 6922nd never closed. Instead the 6922nd RGM was officially relocated from Ashiya AB to Kadena AB with one officer and one airman assigned on 15 January 1959. While plans called for both the 6902nd and 6922nd to operate from Kadena, the 6920th Security Wing (parent unit for the elements on Okinawa) convinced USAFSS headquarters that only one was needed and that was the 6922nd. The 6902nd SCG closed on 1 December 1959 and its personnel and equipment were transferred to the 6922nd RGM on Okinawa and to the 6989th Radio Squadron Mobile at Misawa Air Base, Japan. The 6925th Security Group was activated as the 29th Radio Squadron Mobile (RSM), on 3 September 1952, at Clark Air Base, Philippines. The Group was deactivated on 1 July 1965, when the functions and facilities were assumed by the 6922nd Security Wing, which was moved to Clark AB from Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, during June 1965.
This picture was taken on Oct. 26, 2005 at the 10th Annual Reunion of the 15th Radio Sq. Mobile Association aka 6922nd RGM, in Lancaster, Pa. Left to right in picture above: Ms. Youngja Park, Frank Hogan, and South Korean Army Counter Intelligence, Col. Steven Park.
2007 Reunion
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USAF Korea (K-Sites)1959 - 1970
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Your Morse Code Knowledge
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Manned & Un-Manned
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Photos of Japan 1950 - 1960
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