You’ve told me before that the outside world says Unit 701 is busy developing advanced, top-secret weaponry. But in truth we do no such thing. What do we do then? Well, we are an intelligence-gathering organization, nothing more, nothing less. Our main responsibility is eavesdropping on the radio frequencies of X Country and decrypting their transmissions. Every country has this type of intelligence-gathering service – today and in the past; big countries and small. So you could say that this secret is known to everyone. Every country does it, that’s self-evident. I’ve often said ‘to know thy enemy is to know thyself’; then and only then can you always be victorious. ‘Know thy enemy’ – well, that’s intelligence gathering. In war, intelligence gathering works like a crowbar, a lever that prises open the enemy’s defences. Just as the physicists say, give us a suitable opening, give us the needed information, and we can prise open the secrets of the universe. With enough accurate information, any army can win any war. But there’s only one way to gather this intelligence, and that’s stealing; there is no other way. Sending special agents to infiltrate the enemy’s military apparatuses, scaling their defences: both approaches are forms of stealing. Quietly sitting in front of radio equipment intercepting transmissions is the same. The only difference is that the latter is much safer, and produces more results. In order to combat this type of theft, secret means of encrypting transmissions have been developed and, in tandem, secret means to decrypt these transmissions have likewise been devised. Your father was engaged in decryption.

You could say that decrypting is at the heart of Unit 701. At the very core of the heart.