Part 11

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 pass 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 glass case stretched across the room and barring quick entrance to the shop proper. I examined the assortment 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 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.