64
SECRET ARMIES
Cloud,"
garita,"
"Magellan,"
"Taiyo,"
Each boat
"Oipango,"
"San
Lucas,"
"Santa
Mar
"Wesgate."
carries a short-wave radio
and has a cruising range
of from three to five thousand miles, which
is
extraordinary for
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
just little fishing
boats.
They
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 communica
tion for messages which could be relayed from one to another
and in a few moments reach their destination.
In Col6n 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
population. On these
teeming, hot, tropical streets are some three hundred Japanese
storekeepers, fishermen, commission merchants and barbers-
who
comprise three-fourths of
Panama s
whom do much business, but all of whom sit patiently
in their doorways, reading the newspapers or staring at the
few of
passer-by.
I
counted forty-seven Japanese barbers in Panama and eight
Panama
they cluster on Avenida Central and Calle
both these streets rents are high and,
with the exception of Saturdays when the natives come for ha ir
cuts, the amount of business the barbers do does not warrant
the three to five men in each shop. Yet, though they earn scarcely
in Col6n. In
Carlos A. Mendoza.
On
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
they wandered around, photo
the Canal, the islands around the Canal, the coast line,
graphing
and the topography of the region.
"Panay,"