Secret Armies Part 6

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 j.a.panese-n.a.z.i pact began to circulate throughout the world, the j.a.panese have made several attempts to get a foothold right at the entrance to the Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l. Taboga Island would make a perfect base from which to study the waters and fortifications along the coast and the islands between the Ca.n.a.l and Taboga.

When this and other efforts failed and there was talk of banning alien fishing in Panamanian waters, Yos.h.i.taro 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese invention enabling it to detect and locate mines.

Like all other j.a.panese in the Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l, had some sort of peculiar fortifications in the military zone at Managua.

Shortly thereafter the j.a.panese 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 Ca.n.a.l, which has a harbor big enough to take care of almost all the fleets in the world. Many of the j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese.

Let me ill.u.s.trate 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 j.a.panese, born in Hawaii and a full-fledged American citizen. The navigator and one sailor are also j.a.panese, born in Hawaii but American citizens. The crew of ten consists entirely of j.a.panese born in j.a.pan.

The ten boats which fly the American flag but are manned by j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 pa.s.ser-by.

I counted forty-seven j.a.panese barbers in Panama and eight in Colon.

In Panama they cl.u.s.ter on Avenida Central and Calle Carlos A. Mendoza.

On both these streets rents are high and, with the exception of Sat.u.r.days 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 Ca.n.a.l, the islands around the Ca.n.a.l, 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 j.a.pan, though, if you watch their business carefully, you know they could not possibly have earned enough to pay for their pa.s.sage. 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'

a.s.sociation. The a.s.sociation will not accept barbers of other nationalities but will allow j.a.panese 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' a.s.sociation gathers, the diplomatic representatives of other nations are usually taking a siesta or are down at the beach, but Tetsuo Umimoto, the j.a.panese 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 compet.i.tors up in business. Whenever a j.a.panese arrives in Panama, the Barbers' a.s.sociation 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese fisherman like the others now on the west coast. One morning two j.a.panese battleships appeared and anch.o.r.ed in the harbor. From the reed-and vegetation covered jungle sh.o.r.e, 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 j.a.panese navy.

Today Kubayama works closely with the j.a.panese Consul. Together they call upon the captains of j.a.panese 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.

j.a.panese in the Ca.n.a.l Zone area change their names periodically or come with several pa.s.sports all prepared. There is, for instance, Shoichi Yokoi, who commutes between j.a.pan and Panama without any commercial reasons. On June 7, 1934, the j.a.panese Foreign Office in Tokyo issued pa.s.sport 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 pa.s.sport under the name of Shoichi Yokoi, together with visas which filled the whole pa.s.sport and overflowed onto several extra pages. Shoichi or Masakazu is now traveling with both pa.s.sports and a suitcase full of film for his camera.

Several years ago a j.a.panese named T. Tahara came to Panama as the traveling representative of a newly organized company, the Official j.a.panese a.s.sociation 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 j.a.panese colonization in Ca.n.a.l 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 j.a.pan.

This was in 1936. Half a year later, a suave j.a.panese named Takahiro Wakabayashi appeared in Panama as the representative of the Federation of j.a.panese Importers and Exporters, the same organization under a slightly changed name. Wakabayashi checked into the cool and s.p.a.cious Hotel Tivoli, run by the United States Government on Ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l 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 j.a.pan.

The ink was scarcely dry on the agreement to permit the j.a.panese to experiment in cotton growing before a j.a.panese steamer appeared in Puntarenas with twenty-one young and alert j.a.panese and a bag of cotton seed. They were "laborers," Wakabayashi explained. The "laborers" were put up in first-cla.s.s 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 j.a.panese, 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 Ca.n.a.l.

The harbor at Puntarenas, as I mentioned earlier, would make a splendid base of operations for an enemy fleet. Not far from sh.o.r.e are the flat, level acres of the "experimental station" and the twenty-one j.a.panese who could quickly turn these smooth acres into an air base.

It is north of the Panama Ca.n.a.l and within two hours flying time of it, as Corinto is south of the Ca.n.a.l 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 n.a.z.i Consul to Panama.

On November 15, 1937, Heildelk returned from j.a.pan by way of Germany.

Five days later, on November 20, 1937, his father-in-law, who, besides being n.a.z.i Consul, owns in partnership with Fritz Kohpcke, one of the largest hardware stores in Panama, told his clerks that he and his partner would work a little late that night. Neither partner went out to eat and the corrugated sliding door of the store, at Norte No. 54 in the heart of the Panamanian commercial district, was left open about three feet from the ground so that pa.s.sers-by could not see inside unless they stooped deliberately.

At eight o'clock a car drew up at the corner of the darkened street in front of Neumann & Kohpcke, Ltd. Two unidentified men, Heildelk and Walter Scharpp, former n.a.z.i Consul at Colon who had also just returned from Germany, stepped out, and stooping under the partly open door, entered the store. Once inside Scharpp quietly a.s.sumed command. To all practical purposes they were on German territory, for the n.a.z.i consulate office was in the store.

Scharpp announced that the group had been very carefully chosen because of their known loyalty to n.a.z.i Germany and because of their desire to promote friendship for Germany in Latin American countries and to cooperate with the j.a.panese, who had their own organization functioning efficiently in Central and South America.