wooden walls painted a pale, washed-out blue. A deck which cuts the
store's height in half, forms a little balcony which is covered by a
green and yellow print curtain stretched across it. To the right,
casually covered by another print curtain, is a red painted ladder by
which the deck is reached. On the deck, at the extreme left, where it
is not perceptible from the street or the shop, is another tiny ladder
which reaches to the ceiling.
If you stand on the ladder and press against the ceiling directly over
it, a well-oiled trap door will open soundlessly and lead you into
Lola's bedroom above the shop. In front of the window with the blue
curtain is a worn bed, the hard mattress neatly covered with a
counterpane. At the head of the mattress is a mended tear. It is in
this mattress that Lola hides photographs of extraordinary military
and naval importance. I saw four of them.
The charming little seamstress is one of the most capable of the
Japanese espionage agents operating in the Canal Zone area. Lola Osawa
is not her right name. She is Chiyo Morasawa, who arrived at Balboa
from Yokahama on the Japanese steamship "Anyo Maru" on May 24, 1929,
and promptly disappeared for almost a year. When she appeared again,
she was Lola Osawa, seamstress. She has been an active Japanese agent
for almost ten years, specializing in getting photographs of military
importance. Her husband, who entered Panama without a Panamanian visa
on his passport, is a reserve officer in the Japanese Navy. He lives
with Lola in the room above the shop, never does any work though he
passes as a merchant, and is always wandering around with a camera.
Occasionally he vanishes to Japan. His last trip was in 1935. At that
time he stayed there over a year.
To defend the ten-mile-wide and forty-six-mile-long strip of land,
lakes and canal which the Republic of Panama leased to the United
States "in perpetuity," the army, navy and air corps have woven a
network of secret fortifications, laid mines and placed anti-aircraft
guns. Foreign spies and international adventurers play a sleepless
game to learn these military and naval secrets. The Isthmus is a
center of intrigue, plotting, conniving, conspiracy and espionage,
with the intelligence departments of foreign governments bidding high
for information. For the capture or disablement of the Canal by an
enemy would mean that American ships would have to go around the Horn
to get from one coast to another--a delay which in time of war might
prove to be the difference between victory and defeat.
Because of the efficiency and speed of modern communication and
transportation, any region within five hundred to a thousand miles of
a military objective is considered in the "sensitive zone," especially
if it is of great strategic importance. Hence, espionage activities
embrace Central and South American Republics which may have to be
used by an enemy as a base of operations. Costa Rica, north of the
Canal, and Colombia, south of it, are beehives of secret Japanese,
Nazi and Italian activities. Special efforts are made to buy or lease
land "for colonization," but the land chosen is such that it can be
turned into an air base almost overnight.
For decades Japanese in the Canal Zone area have been photographing
everything in sight, not only around the Canal, but for hundreds of
miles north and south of it; and the Japanese fishing fleet has taken
soundings of the waters and harbors along the coast. Since the
conclusion of the Japanese-Nazi "anti-Communist pact," Nazi agents
have been sent to German colonies in Central and South America to
organize them, carry on propaganda and cooperate secretly with
Japanese agents. Italy, which had been only mildly interested in
Central America, has become extremely active in cultivating the
friendship of Central American Republics since she joined the
Tokyo-Berlin tie-up. Let me illustrate:
The recognized vulnerability of the Canal has caused the United States
to plan another through Nicaragua. The friendship of the Nicaraguan
Government and people, therefore, is of great importance to us from
both a commercial and a military standpoint. It is likewise of
importance to others.
Italy undertook to gain Nicaragua's friendship when she joined the
Japanese-Nazi line-up. First, she offered scholarships, with all
expenses paid, for Nicaraguan students to study fascism in Italy.
Then, on December 14, 1937, about one month after a secret Nazi agent
arrived in Central America with orders to step on the propaganda and
organizational activity, the Italian S.S. "Leme" sailed out of Naples
with a cargo of guns, armored cars, mountain artillery, machine guns
and a considerable amount of munitions.
On January 11, 1938, the Secretary of the Italian Legation in San
Jose, Costa Rica, flew to Managua, Nicaragua, to witness the delivery
of arms which arrived in Managua on January 12, 1938. Diplomatic
representatives do not usually witness purely business transactions,
but this was a shipment worth $300,000 which the Italian Government
knew Nicaragua could not pay. But, as one of the results, Italy today
has a firm foothold in the country through which the United States
hopes to build another Canal. The international espionage underground
world, which knew that the shipment of arms was coming, has it that
Japan, Germany and Italy split the cost of the arms among themselves
to gain the friendship of the Nicaraguan Government.
A flood of Nazi propaganda sent on short-wave beams is directed at
Central and South America from Germany. In Spanish, German, Portuguese
and English, regular programs are sent across at government expense.
Government subsidized news agencies flood the newspapers with "news
dispatches" which they sell at a nominal price or give away. The
programs and the "news dispatches" explain and glorify the
totalitarian form of government, and since many of the sister
"republics" are dictatorships, they are ideologically sympathetic and
receptive.
The Nazis are strong in Colombia, south of the Canal, with a Bund
training regularly in military maneuvers at Cali. Since the
Japanese-Nazi pact, the Japanese have established a colony of several
hundred at Corinto in the Cauca Valley, thirty miles from Cali.
The Japanese colony was settled on land carefully chosen--long, level,
flat acres which overnight can be turned into an air base for a fleet
landed from an airplane carrier or assembled on the spot. And it is
near Cali that Alejandro Tujun, a Japanese in constant touch with the
Japanese Foreign Office, is at this writing dickering for the purchase
of 400,000 acres of level land for "colonization." On such an acreage
enough military men could be colonized to give the United States a
first-class headache in time of war. It is two hours flying time from
Cali to the Canal.
The entrances on either side of the Panama Canal are secretly mined.
The location of these mines is one of the most carefully guarded
secrets of the American navy and one of the most sought after by
international spies.
The Japanese, who have been fishing along the West Coast and
Panamanian waters for years, are the only fishermen who find it
necessary to use sounding lines to catch fish. Sounding lines are used
to measure the depths of the waters and to locate submerged ledges and
covered rocks in this once mountainous area. Any fleet which plans to
approach the Canal or use harbors even within several hundred miles
north or south of the Canal must have this information to know just
where to go and how near to shore they can approach before sending out
landing parties.
The use of sounding lines by Japanese fishermen and the mysterious
going and comings of their boats became so pronounced that the
Panamanian Government could not ignore them. It issued a decree
prohibiting all aliens from fishing in Panamanian waters.
In April, 1937, the "Taiyo Maru," flying the American flag but manned
by Japanese, hauled up her anchor in the dead of night and with all
lights out chugged from the unrestricted waters into the area where
the mines are generally believed to be laid. The "Taiyo" operated out
of San Diego, California, and once established a world's record of
being one hundred and eleven days at sea without catching a single
fish. The captain, piloting the boat from previous general knowledge
of the waters rather than by chart, unfortunately ran aground. The
fishing vessel was stranded on a submerged ledge and couldn't get off.
In the morning the authorities found her, took off her captain and
crew--all of whom had cameras--and asked why the boat was in
restricted waters.
"I didn't know where I was," said the captain. "We were fishing for
bait."
"But bait is caught in the daytime by all other fishermen," the
officials pointed out.
"We thought we might catch some at night," the captain explained.
Since 1934, when rumors of the Japanese-Nazi pact began to circulate
throughout the world, the Japanese have made several attempts to get a
foothold right at the entrance to the Canal on the Pacific side. They
have moved heaven and earth for permission to establish a
refrigeration plant on Taboga Island, some twelve miles out on the
Pacific Ocean and facing the Canal. Taboga Island would make a perfect
base from which to study the waters and fortifications along the coast
and the islands between the Canal and Taboga.
When this and other efforts failed and there was talk of banning alien
fishing in Panamanian waters, Yoshitaro Amano, who runs a store in
Panama and has far flung interests all along the Pacific coasts of
Central and South America, organized the Amano Fisheries, Ltd. In
July, 1937, he built in Japan the "Amano Maru," as luxurious a fishing
boat as ever sailed the seas. With a purring diesel engine, it has the
longest cruising range of any fishing vessel afloat, a powerful
sending and receiving radio with a permanent operator on board, and an
extremely secret Japanese invention enabling it to detect and locate
mines.
Like all other Japanese in the Canal Zone area, Amano, rated a
millionaire in Chile, goes in for a little photography. In September,
1937, word spread along the international espionage grapevine that
Nicaragua, through which the United States was planning another Canal,
had some sort of peculiar fortifications in the military zone at
Managua.
Shortly thereafter the Japanese millionaire appeared at Managua with
his expensive camera and headed straight for the military zone. Thirty
minutes after he arrived (8:00 A.M. of October 7, 1937), he was in a
Nicaraguan jail charged with suspected espionage and with taking
pictures in prohibited areas.
I mention this incident because the luxurious boat was registered
under the Panamanian flag and immediately began a series of actions so
peculiar that the Republic of Panama canceled the Panamanian registry.
The "Amano" promptly left for Puntarenas, Costa Rica, north of the
Canal, which has a harbor big enough to take care of almost all the
fleets in the world. Many of the Japanese ships went there, sounding
lines and all, when alien fishing was prohibited in Panamanian waters.
Today the "Amano Maru" is a mystery ship haunting Puntarenas and the
waters between Costa Rica and Panama and occasionally vanishing out to
sea with her wireless crackling constantly.
Some seventy fishing vessels operating out of San Diego, California,
fly the American flag. San Diego is of great importance to a potential
enemy because it is a naval as well as an air base. Of these seventy
vessels flying the American flag, ten are either partially or entirely
manned by Japanese.
Let me illustrate how boats fly the American flag:
On March 9, 1937, the S.S. "Columbus" was registered as an American
fishing vessel under certificate of registry No. 235,912, issued at
Los Angeles. The vessel is owned by the Columbus Fishing Company of
Los Angeles. The captain, R.I. Suenaga, is a twenty-six-year-old
Japanese, born in Hawaii and a full-fledged American citizen. The
navigator and one sailor are also Japanese, born in Hawaii but
American citizens. The crew of ten consists entirely of Japanese born
in Japan.
The ten boats which fly the American flag but are manned by Japanese
crews are: "Alert," "Asama," "Columbus," "Flying Cloud," "Magellan,"
"Oipango," "San Lucas," "Santa Margarita," "Taiyo," "Wesgate."
Each boat carries a short-wave radio and has a cruising range of from
three to five thousand miles, which is extraordinary for just little
fishing boats. They operate on the high seas and where they go, only
the master and crew and those who send them know. The only time anyone
gets a record of them is when they come in to refuel or repair.
In the event of war half a dozen of these fishing vessels, stretched
across the Pacific at intervals of five hundred or a thousand miles,
would make an excellent system of communication for messages which
could be relayed from one to another and in a few moments reach their
destination.
In Colon on the Atlantic side and in Panama on the Pacific, East and
West literally meet at the crossroads of the world. The winding
streets are crowded with the brown and black people who comprise
three-fourths of Panama's population. On these teeming, hot, tropical
streets are some three hundred Japanese storekeepers, fishermen,
commission merchants and barbers-few of whom do much business, but all
of whom sit patiently in their doorways, reading the newspapers or
staring at the passer-by.
I counted forty-seven Japanese barbers in Panama and eight in Colon.
In Panama they cluster on Avenida Central and Calle Carlos A. Mendoza.
On both these streets rents are high and, with the exception of
Saturdays when the natives come for haircuts, the amount of business
the barbers do does not warrant the three to five men in each shop.
Yet, though they earn scarcely enough to meet their rent, there is not
a lowly barber among them who does not have a Leica or Contax camera
with which, until the sinking of the "Panay," they wandered around,
photographing the Canal, the islands around the Canal, the coast line,
and the topography of the region.
They live in Panama with a sort of permanence, but nine out of ten do
not have families--even those advanced in years. Periodically some of
them take trips to Japan, though, if you watch their business
carefully, you know they could not possibly have earned enough to pay
for their passage. And those in the outlying districts don't even
pretend to have a business. They just sit and wait, without any
visible means of support. It is not until you study their locations,
as in the Province of Chorrera, that you find they are in spots of
strategic military or naval importance.
Since there were so many barbers in Panama, the need for an occasional
gathering without attracting too much attention became apparent. And
so the little barber, A. Sonada, who shaves and cuts hair at 45 Carlos
A. Mendoza Street, organized a "labor union," the Barbers'
Association. The Association will not accept barbers of other
nationalities but will allow Japanese fishermen to attend meetings.
They meet on the second floor of the building at 58 Carlos A. Mendoza
Street, where many of the fishermen live. At their meetings one guard
stands outside the room and another downstairs at the entrance to the
building.
On hot Sunday afternoons when the Barbers' Association gathers, the
diplomatic representatives of other nations are usually taking a
siesta or are down at the beach, but Tetsuo Umimoto, the Japanese
Consul, climbs the stairs in the stuffy atmosphere and sits in on the
deliberations of the barbers and visiting fishermen. It is the only
barbers' union I ever heard of whose deliberations were considered
important enough for a diplomatic representative to attend. This labor
union has another extraordinary custom. It has a special fund to put
competitors up in business. Whenever a Japanese arrives in Panama, the
Barbers' Association opens a shop for him, buys the chairs-provides
him with everything necessary to compete with them for the scarce
trade in the shaving and shearing industry!
At these meetings the barber Sonada, who is only a hired hand, sits
beside the Japanese Consul at the head of the room. Umimoto remains
standing until Sonada is seated. When another barber, T. Takano, who
runs a little hole-in-the-wall shop and lives at 10 Avenida B, shows
up, both Sonada and the Consul rise, bow very low and remain standing
until he motions them to be seated. Maybe it's just an old Japanese
custom, but the Consul does not extend the same courtesy to the other
barbers.
In attendance at these guarded meetings of the barbers' union and
visiting fishermen, is Katarino Kubayama, a gentle-faced, soft-spoken,
middle-aged businessman with no visible business. He is fifty-five
years old now and lives at Calle Colon, Casa No. 11.
Way back in 1917 Kubayama was a barefoot Japanese fisherman like the
others now on the west coast. One morning two Japanese battleships
appeared and anchored in the harbor. From the reed-and vegetation
covered jungle shore, a sun-dried, brown _panga_ was rowed out by the
barefooted fisherman using the short quick strokes of the native. His
brown, soiled dungarees were rolled up to his calves; his shirt, open
at the throat, was torn and his head was covered by a ragged straw
hat.
The silvery notes of a bugle sounded. The crew of the flagship lined
up at attention. The officers, including the Commander, also waited
stiffly at attention while the fisherman tied his _panga_ to the
ship's ladder. As Kubayama clambered on board, the officers saluted.
With a great show of formality they escorted him to the Commander's
quarters, the junior officer following behind at a respectful
distance. Two hours later Kubayama was escorted to the ladder again,
the trumpet sounded its salute, and the ragged fisherman rowed
away--all conducted with a courtesy extended only to a high ranking
officer of the Japanese navy.
Today Kubayama works closely with the Japanese Consul. Together they
call upon the captains of Japanese ships whenever they come to Panama,
and are closeted with them for hours at a time. Kubayama says he is
trying to sell supplies to the captains.
Japanese in the Canal Zone area change their names periodically or
come with several passports all prepared. There is, for instance,
Shoichi Yokoi, who commutes between Japan and Panama without any
commercial reasons. On June 7, 1934, the Japanese Foreign Office in
Tokyo issued passport No. 255,875 to him under the name of Masakazu
Yokoy with permission to Visit all Central and South American
countries. Though he had permission for all, he applied only for a
Panamanian visa (September 28, 1934), after which he settled down for
a while among the fishermen and barbers. On July 11, 1936, the Foreign
Office in Tokyo handed Yokoy another passport under the name of
Shoichi Yokoi, together with visas which filled the whole passport and
overflowed onto several extra pages. Shoichi or Masakazu is now
traveling with both passports and a suitcase full of film for his
camera.
Several years ago a Japanese named T. Tahara came to Panama as the
traveling representative of a newly organized company, the Official
Japanese Association of Importers and Exporters for Latin America, and
established headquarters in the offices of the Boyd Bros. shipping
agency in Panama.
Nelson Rounsevell, publisher of the _Panama American_, who has fought
Japanese colonization in Canal areas, printed a story that this big
businessman got very little mail, made no efforts to establish
business contacts and, in talking with the few businessmen he met
socially, showed a complete lack of knowledge about business. Tahara
was talked about and orders promptly came through for him to return to
Japan.
This was in 1936. Half a year later, a suave Japanese named Takahiro
Wakabayashi appeared in Panama as the representative of the
Federation of Japanese Importers and Exporters, the same organization
under a slightly changed name. Wakabayashi checked into the cool and
spacious Hotel Tivoli, run by the United States Government on Canal
Zone territory and, protected by the guardian wings of the somewhat
sleepy American Eagle, washed up and made a beeline for the Boyd Bros.
office, where he was closeted with the general manager for over an
hour.
Wakabayashi's business interests ranged from taking pictures of the
Canal in specially chartered planes, to negotiating for manganese
deposits and attempting to establish an "experimental station to grow
cotton in Costa Rica."
The big manganese-and-cotton-photographer man fluttered all over
Central and South America, always with his camera. One week he was in
San Jose, Costa Rica; the next he made a hurried special flight to
Bogota, Colombia (November 12, 1937); then back to Panama and Costa
Rica. He finally got permission from Costa Rica to establish his
experimental station.
In obtaining that concession he was aided by Giuseppe Sotanis, an
Italian gentleman wearing the fascist insignia in the lapel of his
coat, whom he met at the Gran Hotel in San Jose. Sotanis, a former
Italian artillery officer, is a nattily dressed, slender man in his
early forties who apparently does nothing in San Jose except study his
immaculate finger nails, drink Scotch-and-sodas, collect stamps and
vanish every few months only to reappear again, still studying his
immaculate finger nails. It was Sotanis who arranged for Nicaragua to
get the shipment of arms and munitions which I mentioned earlier.
This uncommunicative Italian stamp collector paved the way for
Wakabayashi to meet Raul Gurdian, the Costa Rican Minister of Finance,
and Ramon Madrigal, Vice-president of the government-owned National
Bank and a prominent Costa Rican merchant. Shortly after Costa Rica
gave Wakabayashi permission to experiment with his cotton growing,
both the Minister of Finance and the Vice-president of the government
bank took trips to Japan.
The ink was scarcely dry on the agreement to permit the Japanese to
experiment in cotton growing before a Japanese steamer appeared in
Puntarenas with twenty-one young and alert Japanese and a bag of
cotton seed. They were "laborers," Wakabayashi explained. The
"laborers" were put up in first-class hotels and took life easy while
Wakabayashi and one of the laborers started hunting a suitable spot on
which to plant their bag of seed. All sorts of land was offered to
them, but Wakabayashi wanted no land anywhere near a hill or a
mountain. He finally found what he wanted half-way between Puntarenas
and San Jose--long, level, flat acres. He wanted this land at any
price, finally paying for it an annual rental equal to the value of
the acres.
The twenty-one "laborers" who had been brought from Chimbota, Peru,
where there is a colony of twenty thousand Japanese, planted an acre
with cotton seed and sat them down to rest, imperturbable, silent,
waiting. The plowed land is now as smooth and level as the acres at
Corinto in Colombia, south of the Canal.
The harbor at Puntarenas, as I mentioned earlier, would make a
splendid base of operations for an enemy fleet. Not far from shore are
the flat, level acres of the "experimental station" and the twenty-one
Japanese who could quickly turn these smooth acres into an air base.
It is north of the Panama Canal and within two hours flying time of
it, as Corinto is south of the Canal and within two hours flying time.
The Boyd Bros. steamship agency, to which Tahara and Wakabayashi went
immediately upon arrival, is an American concern. The manager, with
whom each was closeted, is Hans Hermann Heildelk of Avenida Peru, No.
64, Panama City, and, though efforts have been made to keep it secret,
part owner of the agency. Heildelk is also the son-in-law of Ernst F.
Neumann, the Nazi Consul to Panama.