Part 12

"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.