Secret Armies Part 5

That Germany, j.a.pan and Italy are not working toward peaceful ends in Mexico is slowly dawning upon the Mexican Government. Influential government and trade-union leaders have repeatedly shown their dislike of n.a.z.ism and fascism and have urged propaganda against them.

On the morning of October 5, 1937, Freiherr Riedt von Collenberg, n.a.z.i minister to Mexico, telephoned the j.a.panese and Italian ministers to suggest a joint meeting to discuss steps to counteract the attacks on fascism and their countries. The j.a.panese minister, Sacchiro Koshda, suave and skilled in such matters, thought it would not be wise to meet in any of the legations. The Italian minister suggested the offices of the Italian Union on San Cosne Avenue.

At half past one in the afternoon of October 7, the ministers arrived, each in a taxi instead of the legation car which carries a conspicuous diplomatic license plate. At this secret meeting which lasted until after four, they concluded that it would be unwise for them personally to take any steps to counteract the anti-fascist activities--that it would be wiser to work indirectly through fascist organizations like the Confederation of the Middle Cla.s.s and its a.s.sociated bodies. A few days earlier each minister had received a letter from several organizations allied with the Confederation of the Middle Cla.s.s. It was an offer to help the Berlin-Tokyo-Rome combination. A free translation of the pa.s.sage which the ministers discussed (from the letter received by the j.a.panese minister which I now have) follows:

"We, exactly like the representatives of the three powers, love our Fatherland and are disposed to any sacrifice to prevent the intervention of these elements [Jews and Communists] in our politics, in which, unfortunately, they have begun to have great influence. And we will employ, and are employing, all legal methods of struggle to make an end of them."

The phrase "legal methods" is frequently employed by those who suggest illegal activity. The German Minister knew that the _Union Nacionalista Mexicana_, one of the signers of the letter, was run by Escobar, and that Carmen Calero, 12 Place de la Concepcion, Mexico City, an elderly woman physician active in many fascist organizations, was a member of the _Partido Anti-reelectionista Accion_, another of the signers.

One month later the various fascist groups got enough money to launch an intensive pro-fascist drive under the usual guise of fighting Communism. Jose Luis Noriega, Secretary of the Nationalist Youth of Mexico, which also signed the letters to the ministers, left for the United States to organize an anti-Cardenas drive. At the same time, Carmen Calero left on a mysterious mission to Puebla on November 12, 1937, with a letter from Escobar to J. Trinidad Mata, publisher of the local paper _Avance_. She carried still another letter addressed to their "distinguished comrades," without mentioning names, and signed by both Escobar and Ovidio Pedrero Valenzuela, President of the _Accion Civica Nacionalista_. The "distinguished comrades" to whom she presented the letter were the n.a.z.i honorary consul in Puebla, Carl Petersen, Avenida 2, Oriente 15, and a j.a.panese agent named L.

Yuzinratsa with whom the consul has been in repeated conferences.

Six weeks after the secret meeting of the j.a.panese, German and Italian ministers, and one week after she went to Puebla, Dr. Carmen Calero got twenty-two kilos of dynamite and stored it in a house at 39 Juan de la Mateos, in Mexico City. She, her sister, Colonel Valenzuela, and four others, met at her home and laid plans to a.s.sa.s.sinate President Cardenas by blowing up his train when he left on a proposed trip to Sonora.

On November 18, 1937, the secret police made a series of simultaneous raids upon Dr. Calero's and Valenzuela's homes and the house where the dynamite was cached. They arrested everyone in the houses. But once the arrests had been made, the Mexican Government found itself in a quandary. To bring the prisoners to trial would involve foreign governments and create an international scandal; so Cardenas personally ordered the secret police to release them.

The arrests, however, scared the wits out of the ministers, and their horror was not lessened when they discovered that the letters from the fascist organizations had vanished from their files. They wouldn't even answer the telephone when one of the released fascist leaders called. It was then that the Mexican fascists decided to send a special messenger to Francisco Franco in Spain (November 30, 1937) with the request that Franco intercede to get money from Hitler to help overthrow Cardenas, since the n.a.z.i minister was too scared to cooperate. The special messenger was Fernando Ostos Mora. He never got there.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] In May, 1938, Cedillo launched an abortive rebellion and is now being hunted by the Mexican government.

[5] After Cedillo's defeat von Merck fled to New York and went to Germany.

V

_Surrounding the Panama Ca.n.a.l_

There is a little shirt shop in Colon, Panama, on Calle 10a between Avenida Herrera and Avenida Amador Guerrero, whose red and black painted shingle announces that Lola Osawa is the proprietor.

Across the street from her shirt shop, where the red light district begins, is a bar frequented by natives, soldiers and sailors. Tourists seldom go there, for it is a bit off the beaten track. In front of the bar is a West Indian boy with a tripod and camera with a telescopic lens. He never photographs natives, and wandering tourists pa.s.s him by, but he is there every day from eight in the morning until dark.

His job is to photograph everyone who shows an undue interest in the little shirt shop and particularly anyone who enters or leaves it.

Usually he snaps your picture from across the street, but if he misses you he darts across and waits to take another shot when you come out.

I saw him take my picture when I entered the store. It was almost high noon and Lola was not yet up. The business upon which she and her husband are supposed to depend for a living was in the hands of two giggling young Panamanian girls who sat idly at two ancient Singer sewing machines.

"You got shirts?" I asked.

Without troubling to rise and wait on me, they pointed to a gla.s.s case stretched across the room and barring quick entrance to the shop proper. I examined the a.s.sortment in the case, counting a total of twenty-eight shirts.

"I don't especially like these," I said. "Got any others?"

"No more," one of them giggled.

"Where's Lola?"

"Upstairs," the other said, motioning with her thumb to the ceiling.

"Looks like you're doing a rushing business, eh?" They looked puzzled and I explained: "Busy, eh?"

"Busy? No. No busy."

There is little work for them and neither Lola nor they care a whoop whether or not you buy any of the shop's stock of twenty-eight shirts.

Lola herself pays little attention to the business from which she obviously cannot earn enough to pay the rent, let alone keep herself and her husband, pay two girls and a lookout.

The little shirt shop is a cubbyhole about nine feet square, its 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 j.a.panese espionage agents operating in the Ca.n.a.l Zone area. Lola Osawa is not her right name. She is Chiyo Morasawa, who arrived at Balboa from Yokahama on the j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese agent for almost ten years, specializing in getting photographs of military importance. Her husband, who entered Panama without a Panamanian visa on his pa.s.sport, is a reserve officer in the j.a.panese Navy. He lives with Lola in the room above the shop, never does any work though he pa.s.ses as a merchant, and is always wandering around with a camera.

Occasionally he vanishes to j.a.pan. 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 ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l, and Colombia, south of it, are beehives of secret j.a.panese, n.a.z.i 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 j.a.panese in the Ca.n.a.l Zone area have been photographing everything in sight, not only around the Ca.n.a.l, but for hundreds of miles north and south of it; and the j.a.panese fishing fleet has taken soundings of the waters and harbors along the coast. Since the conclusion of the j.a.panese-n.a.z.i "anti-Communist pact," n.a.z.i agents have been sent to German colonies in Central and South America to organize them, carry on propaganda and cooperate secretly with j.a.panese 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 ill.u.s.trate:

The recognized vulnerability of the Ca.n.a.l 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 j.a.panese-n.a.z.i 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 n.a.z.i 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 Ca.n.a.l. The international espionage underground world, which knew that the shipment of arms was coming, has it that j.a.pan, Germany and Italy split the cost of the arms among themselves to gain the friendship of the Nicaraguan Government.

A flood of n.a.z.i 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 n.a.z.is are strong in Colombia, south of the Ca.n.a.l, with a Bund training regularly in military maneuvers at Cali. Since the j.a.panese-n.a.z.i pact, the j.a.panese have established a colony of several hundred at Corinto in the Cauca Valley, thirty miles from Cali.

The j.a.panese 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 a.s.sembled on the spot. And it is near Cali that Alejandro Tujun, a j.a.panese in constant touch with the j.a.panese Foreign Office, is at this writing d.i.c.kering 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-cla.s.s headache in time of war. It is two hours flying time from Cali to the Ca.n.a.l.

The entrances on either side of the Panama Ca.n.a.l 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 j.a.panese, 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 Ca.n.a.l or use harbors even within several hundred miles north or south of the Ca.n.a.l must have this information to know just where to go and how near to sh.o.r.e they can approach before sending out landing parties.

The use of sounding lines by j.a.panese fishermen and the mysterious going and comings of their boats became so p.r.o.nounced 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 j.a.panese, 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.