I was a Cryptographer

Heroes Remember

I was a Cryptographer

Transcript

My job, actually, I was a cryptographer which means I took all the daily information that was gathered by other people, taken and given to me and I would encode it, put it in something that you cannot read and send it over the radio to Leopoldville. Leopoldville would re-encrypt it, send the information to Ottawa and some of it would go to UN headquarters in New York. But who got it? What they did with it after that I don't know. I did it. If it wasn't for me they wouldn't have got it in the first place. So there you go.

Description

Mr Gratto remembers the work he did as a cryptographer and the process that was involved.

James Gratto

James Gratto was born in 1934 in Halifax,Nova Scotia. His father worked on the Canadian National Railway and his mother passed away when he was young. One day during school he and some of his friends went down to the recruitment truck during lunch time to sign up. After getting the call he quit school and went to basic training for eight to ten weeks before serving in the Congo for seven months where he worked in 1962 with the Royal Canadian Signals Corp with UN Peacekeeping. Later on Mr. Gratto became a member of the Air Borne Signals Squadron. He had a military career of 32 years.

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