SECRET ARMIES
58
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
seamstress.
on May
24, 1929, and promptly disappeared for
she appeared again, she was Lola Osawa,
She has been an active Japanese agent for almost
Maru"
"Anyo
almost a year.
When
ten years, specializing in getting photographs of military im
portance. Her husband, who entered Panama without a Pana
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
manian
over a year.
To
defend the ten-mile-wide and forty-six-mile-long strip of
and canal which the Republic of Panama leased to
land, lakes
the army, navy and air corps
the United States
perpetuity,"
have woven a network of secret fortifications, laid mines and
placed anti-aircraft guns. Foreign spies and international ad
"in
venturers play a sleepless
The
game
to learn these military
and naval
a center of intrigue, plotting, conniving,
and espionage, with the intelligence departments of
conspiracy
foreign governments bidding high for information. For the cap
ture or disablement of the Canal by an enemy would mean that
secrets.
Isthmus
is
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,"
if it is of great strategic importance. Hence, espionage
especially
activities
embrace Central and South American Republics which