Morse coded upper dentures Leave a comment

A dental military procedure is to have their denture-wearing service men and women’s dental appliances tagged or engraved with the wearer’s name, rank, and a serial number.

Lieutenant Jack Mallory, a 22 year old navy prosthetics dentist, was assigned to the 361st Station Hospital in the country’s capital Tokyo. This hospital was responsible for providing treatment to those incarcerated in the nearby Sugamo Prison.  There a self-inflicted injured former Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, was being held on very serious war crime charges.

Hideki Tojo had been the General of the Japanese Imperial Army and became Prime Minister of Japan in 1941.  He had sought to extend the Japanese economy and their military control throughout the Far East.  He thought that American forces would not be able to fight World War II on two fronts, so he convinced the Japanese government and their armed forces to attack the United States of America by bombing their navy at Pearl Harbour on Dec. 7, 1941.  General Tojo led the Japanese war whilst they were on the offensive, until he resigned his Prime Ministership in 1944.

Lieutenant Jack Mallory and a fellow dentist, Lieutenant George Foster, were detailed to Sugamo Prison to examine General Tojo’s dental health.  They found that his upper teeth had been previously extracted and several of his remaining lower teeth were crumbling and in a decayed state. Through the interpreter they learnt that the prisoner felt he wouldn’t be able to clearly present his own oral testimony in his forthcoming war crimes trial, unless he was able to wear dentures.  Final agreement was that an upper denture would be fabricated.

The military services required all dentures should carry an identifying mark incorporated during their manufacturing process as previously mentioned in the opening paragraph.  This particular case offered a unique opportunity to tag the upper denture for General Tojo with the USA’s recent battle cry phrase: Remember Pearl Harbor.

Lieutenant Mallory knew if he inscribed ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ on the upper denture. this conspicuous message would be readily identified by the numerous service personnel attending and guarding the prisoner.  Lieutenant Mallory decided he would use Morse code for USA’s post Pearl Harbour battle cry in the Far East so it wouldn’t readily be detected.  It was a real one-upmanship to have such a coded statement ‘fixed’ inside the foremost captured enemy leader’s mouth.

Lieutenant Mallory precisely drilled in a series of dots and dashes into the arched row of artificial porcelain teeth.  On reflection this must have been a precision undertaking for ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ comes out in Morse code as :-

.-.  .  —  .  —  -…  .  .-.  .–.  .  .-  .-.  .-..  ….  .-  .-.  -…  —  .-.

To fit that series of dots and dashes, with spaces, as a continuous coded message around the palatal arch of an upper denture with porcelain teeth would have been quite some undertaking, even with very fine pointed diamond burs.  General Tojo was provided with his upper denture and continually wore it, unaware of the inscription he was chewing on and speaking over each day he spent in prison and court.

In February 1947, Lieutenant Mallory divulged his secret to two new dental recruits as he drove them to the well-guarded Sugamo prison.  General Tojo was asked to remove his denture for a routine examination.  The recruits rinsed and dried the denture and the dry palatal surfaces of the porcelain teeth clearly revealed the coded statement.  They were impressed with Lieutenant Mallory’s handiwork.  On returning to their military base one of the dental recruits mentioned the Morse code story in a letter to his parents in Texas.  Such a tale was related to the local radio station.  It then appeared in newspapers worldwide.

It didn’t then take long for the Morse coded Far East war cry slogan story to be brought to the attention of Lieutenant Mallory’s superior, a Major William Hill. “I was tipped off I was in trouble,” Jack Mallory stated.  Lieutenant Mallory had to confess to his supervisor what he had undertaken.  Major William Hill ordered Lieutenant Mallory and fellow dentist Lieutenant Foster to undo their ‘clever’ inscribed tagged handiwork immediately as the American forces shouldn’t be seen to be taking any such measures against their recent foe and prisoner.

On a snowy February night, Lieutenant Mallory and Lieutenant Foster drove in a Jeep to their medical centre to pick up a portable dental motor, hand-piece and selection of burs suitable to trim down and smooth over the surfaces of the porcelain teeth.  It was late, 11pm, when they arrived at the prison.  Fortunately Lieutenant Foster knew the guarding officer, though at this very late hour it appeared very unlikely any form of dental treatment on the famous incarcerated prisoner would have been sanctioned.  They did however manage to visit General Tojo’s cell to request that the prisoner be woken and his denture be removed for emergency work to be performed.

Lieutenant Mallory installed in a nearby room, with his acquired mobile dental equipment, to grind away any trace of the Morse coded US services Far East war cry from the porcelain denture teeth surfaces.  General Tojo no doubt wondered why they wanted to retrieve his dentures at such an hour, but as far as Lieutenant Mallory knew General Tojo never commented on the irregular palatal surface to his upper denture teeth, before or after their near midnight visit.

Lieutenant Mallory and Lieutenant Foster thought they had covered their tracks thoroughly until the USA’s military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, published the story about the inscribed ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ being drilled into General Tojo’s denture.  The colonel in charge of Sugamo Prison immediately summoned Lieutenant Mallory and Lieutenant Foster to an enquiry.  With the evidence on General Tojo’s completely ground away, the young dental officers were able to soundly deny the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes story.

This Morse coded denture story died down after that. In the final week of Lieutenant Mallory’s stay in Japan he was able to attended the war crime trials and watched General Tojo as he sat, just 30 feet away.

General Tojo was able to speak for himself at his trial and took responsibility for Japan’s actions during the war. He was found guilty and was hanged on December 23, 1948.

Lieutenant Jack Mallory passed away in 2013 at the age of 88.

References :-
Killing the rising sun,  Bill O’Reilly & Martin Dugard,
Published by Henry Holt & Co., LLC in 2016
ISBN 978 1 5098 4147 9
On-line Chico newspaper review September 12th 2002