SURROUNDING THE PANAMA CANAL
69
Finance and the Vice-president of the government bank took
trips to
Japan.
ink was scarcely dry on the agreement to permit the Japa
nese to experiment in cotton growing before a Japanese steamer
The
appeared in Puntarenas with twenty-one young and alert Japa
nese and a bag of cotton seed. They were "laborers," Wakabayashi explained. The "laborers" were put up in first-class hotels
and took life easy while Wakabayashi and one of the laborers
started hunting a suitable spot on which to plant their bag of
was offered to them, but Wakabayashi
seed. All sorts of land
wanted no land anywhere near a hill or a mountain. He finally
found what he wanted half-way between Puntarenas and San
at any price,
Jos^ long, level, flat acres. He wanted this land
value of the
finally paying for it an annual rental equal to the
acres.
The
twenty-one
"laborers"
who had been brought from Chim-
a colony of twenty thousand Japanese,
an acre with cotton seed and sat them down to rest,
planted
imperturbable, silent, waiting. The plowed land is now as smooth
bota, Peru, where there
is
and
Corinto in Colombia, south of the Canal.
level as the acres at
The harbor
at Puntarenas, as I
mentioned
earlier,
would make
a splendid base of operations for an enemy fleet. Not far from
shore are the flat, level acres of the "experimental station" and
the twenty-one Japanese
acres into
an
who
air base. It
is
could quickly turn these smooth
north of the Panama Canal and
within two hours flying time of it, as Corinto
Canal and within two hours flying time.
The Boyd
Bros, steamship agency, to
bayashi went immediately upon
is
south of the
which Tahara and Waka
is an American concern.
arrival,
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