to
get the shipment of arms and munitions which I mentioned earlier.

This uncommunicative Italian stamp collector paved the way for
Wakabayashi to meet Raul Gurdian, the Costa Rican Minister of Finance,
and Ramon Madrigal, Vice-president of the government-owned National
Bank and a prominent Costa Rican merchant. Shortly after Costa Rica
gave Wakabayashi permission to experiment with his cotton growing,
both the Minister of Finance and the Vice-president of the government
bank took trips to Japan.

The ink was scarcely dry on the agreement to permit the Japanese to
experiment in cotton growing before a Japanese steamer appeared in
Puntarenas with twenty-one young and alert Japanese 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 seed. All sorts of land was offered to
them, but Wakabayashi wanted no land anywhere near a hill or a
mountain. He finally found what he wanted half-way between Puntarenas
and San Jose--long, level, flat acres. He wanted this land at any
price, finally paying for it an annual rental equal to the value of
the acres.

The twenty-one "laborers" who had been brought from Chimbota, Peru,
where there is a colony of twenty thousand Japanese, planted an acre
with cotton seed and sat them down to rest, imperturbable, silent,
waiting. The plowed land is now as smooth and level as the acres at
Corinto in Colombia, south of the Canal.

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 who could quickly turn these smooth acres into an air base.
It is north of the Panama Canal and within two hours flying time of
it, as Corinto is south of the Canal and within two hours flying time.

The Boyd Bros. steamship agency, to which Tahara and Wakabayashi went
immediately upon arrival, is an American concern. 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 agency. Heildelk is also the son-in-law of Ernst F.
Neumann, the Nazi Consul to Panama.

On November 15, 1937, Heildelk returned from Japan by way of Germany.
Five days later,