The below is a copy of the content of an original rich text file shared by Bob with movie producers holding the rights for a Tokyo Underworld movie.
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TOKYO UNDERWORLD ZAPPETTI INTERVIEW TAPE SAMPLE B
To: Harry & Mary Jane and M. Scorsese
From: Robert Whiting
TOKYO UNDERWORLD ZAPPETTI INTERVIEW SAMPLE B (14,978 words)
(1945-1956)
OMURA, NAGASAKI “GEISHA HOUSE”
TOKYO GHQ, FIRST JAPANESE WIFE, “PALACE HEIGHTS”
BLACK MARKET, DEPORTATION, GINZA LANSCO GANG
IMPERIAL HOTEL DIAMOND ROBBERY
TOKYO JAIL
YOSHIKO 2
FIRST WIFE
FIRST TOKYO RESTAURANT
1945 OMURA, NAGASAKI “GEISHA HOUSE”
Then I went into a Marine fighter squadron. I was the first sergeant of a headquarters squadron on Okinawa. In the end of May 1945, the Japanese landed a Kamikaze airplane on that strip… Like a DC-3. One or two. And these guys were wearing silk pyjamas. Greens. Yellows. They tore the base up. Because it was a suicide mission. They were eventually all killed. Or captured. Or something.
The war ended and we flew up to Omura, Kyushu. What they called Air Base Command.. Omura Kyushu is near the Sasebo Naval Base. Omura’s where the airport is now. Well, it used to be a big grass mat, back then. That’s all it was. And it had hangars. They were all perforated. Bullet holes all over them. Inside the hangars there was nothing but big torpedoes. Planes. You name it. But they had no gasoline. They couldn’t fly the airplanes. And all the propellors were taken off the airplanes, because the Japanese had given up, the war was ended and they were ordered to take off the props of the planes so they couldn’t be used. And I remember there was a Japanese admiral there. I guess he was the commander of the base. He had his soldiers lined up to turn over the base. But we not authorized to touch him because we were…I was the highest-ranking guy there and I was only a staff sergeant.
We flew up in B-25’s. Oh, I imagine there must have been about 20 or30 of us. All Marines. Enlisted men. A few officers. I was a first sergeant. First sergeant is always in charge. The officers were not administrative officers. They were pilots. And that’s when they had FOU’s. You know, the Corsair. And they objective was to fly low over the neighborhood and terrorize the Japanese with the sound of the airplane. This was after we landed. A little later after August 15 or 16, when the war ended.
Q: And so you landed, and these guys were waiting to turn over the base to you?
A: Yeah. But we couldn’t touch it. We had to bring in another person the same rank they are to do that. That situation only lasted a couple of days. Then some wheel must have come in and taken over the..
Q: So what did you do. You just ignore them?
A: Just ignored them. Who you gonna speak to anyway. We speak English. They speak Japanese.
Q: So you landed, they approached you?
A: No, they were on the airport. Like soldiers. A welcoming committee. Lined up. In formation. They were only two lines. Most of them were dead already. They all took off on Kamikaze flights. I’d say there were maybe 20 men. You couldn’t tell what they were. But the guy in the front was a big fat admiral, probably, base commander. But he can’t give his sword to a sergeant or a corporal. I don’t think they allow that.
Q: The guy tried to present his sword to you when you arrived and got out of plane?
A: Not to me. Because we were instructed to keep away. To just leave them alone. Some receiving officer had to come up, because according to the Geneva Convention, that’s the way it was done. America follows all those rules and regulations. Of course, nobody else does… And then they were gone. Somebody on a different plane came up and took the sword. I don’t know where they went…
We just see them across the field. We were in a different area. We could see all the soldiers lined up. We didn’t bother with them. We were not allowed …according to what do you call it…protocol?
Q: So he was just waiting for somebody to come over and accept his sword and the surrender of the base.
A: Right.
Q: Were you scared at all?
A: No. I think I was too stupid to be scared. Cuz I still look back and wonder, you know, why I wasn’t worried. It never entered my mind.
Q: What was the weather like then?
A: Oh, beautiful. But remember, that was August. Like we have August here. And then the typhoons came. And the airplanes couldn’t bring up food. So we were reduced to eating in geisha houses. Sweet potatoes and Mikans.
Q: Let’s back up a minute. It was August. The sky was clear. You came in, plane landed. You have a place to stay or what? Was somebody waiting for you?
A: No, nobody. We were first in. There was nobody there. So we just moved into one of the hangars. We just moved into what they left there. There was plenty of beds there. We slept on little cots. The folding cot. They were already there. I remember sleeping on a cot because we used to put our pup tent over it to keep the rain out. The hangar roofs were well-ventilated… You looked up and you saw a million holes in the roof. They shot them all up.
Q: So in the beginning, you just camped out in the hangar and you ate K-rations?
A: Yes. K-rations. That’s all we had. So we just sat there. We had very little to eat, because the typhoons prevented the airplanes from landing. And one day, a big landing craft came with these land marines. We were there in our khaki pants. And we had them already cut to short pants. No shirts. Nothing at all. We were just running around in short pants. And this Marine gets off this big landing craft with guns, and hand grenades and bandoliers, you know. Machine guns. Fully loaded. And he says to us, “You guys POWS’s?” And we couldn’t help laughing. We says know, “We’re Occupation Forces.” And he was fucking…you know… he made an invasion of the base. They had quite a few of those boats come in. The only good thing about it was they brought us food. We got those k-rations and those c-rations and we felt really lucky.
But, we did one thing that was very interesting. We went to the geisha houses there. Sex is a great topic. It’s such a great pastime….The typhoons had stopped the airplanes from bring food in. But you have to remember, America was occupying ALL of Japan. Not just one base. So I image they had a tremendous supply trouble to bring food in. We were not a big contingency. I imagine we were maybe 50 men at most. And I remember when we were there, we decided we were going to go downtown and get us a girl see.
Q: Did you know about that? There were geisha houses?
A: Well, any man with a hard-on can find a girl. If not, the hard-on disappears. You can get used to not having any. So we went downtown and we found out that for 10 yen you could stay all night. But nobody had 10 yen. What the hell is 10 yen, you know? And we are looking at this Japanese money and we say, wait a minute, there’s a lot of that money in Okinawa. So me, being the big First Sergeant, I sent a guy down, a couple of guys down on an aircraft to Okinawa. They picked up enough money so that we gave everybody about 3,000 yen each. You never saw so many rich marines in your life. In an area where you spend 10 yen to stay all night with a girl they had 3,000 yen each. And we used to sit in the geisha houses there. Of course, we had beer. There was no question. The beer was all right. The Mikans were ok. And they used to put the hibachi that they had, they used to cook sweet potato on it. So our dinner for 5 or 6o or 7 days until we got food, was, beer, hibachi cooked sweet potatoes and mikans.
And, of course, sex.
There was not much electricity. I remember we used to take the nose cone of then propellor, put water in it, put our clothes in, put some soap in, put some gasoline underneath it and light the son of a bitch. And that makes a terrific fire. It boils the water and cleans the clothes.
Q: Tell me about the first-time you guys went into town.
A: Well, first we didn’t know where the town was. Then we went into town. Because ther was nothing to eat. We walked around. All on foot. . We had no vehicles. Then we found out there were plenty of girls.
Q: Do you remember what it was like when you first walked in. Were people hiding or what?
A: There was no people, it appeared. It appeared like it was a deserted area, you know. They jsust didn’t come out on the streets or something. There was not a tremendous amount of population in that area anyway. They were probably hiding and things like that. … It was just a ramshackle place. There was nothing important in it. It was just a little village place. I don’t know what part of the base we got off on. You know, the perimeter of the base. Maybe we went in the wrong direction or something. I imagine today it’s a pretty big town. But in those days I didn’t think there was any town at all there. But they had some houses. And they held girls. And that’s all we were interested in.
Q: How’d you find the geisha house?
A: Just smell baby. Just smell…. You know if one guy finds it, we’re all gona find it, because he’s gonna come back and say what he did. And then the next day there’’nobody on the base, because they’re all chasing girls.
But we had no money. But then when we got this money from Okinawa, we were all rich. And the girls loved us because we had more money than they ever seen before.
Not that it was any god damn good, but it was money. Today they still using that money.
Q: They didn’t speak any English at all, these girls?
A: No. It would be a crime. If they spoke English they’d probably get their nuts cut out. Japanese in those days were very, very…. they didn’t know what the American was….Only except for the propaganda machine. And then you go to places like Okinawa where the kids committed suicide. And then there’s Saipan where they jumped off the cliffs. The mothers and kids jumped off the cliffs. You know that history. And it was a shame, because we were not mean. We were not nasty. We had no desire to hurt anybody. We never carried sidearms. We never had offensive weapons with us. We were not interested in killing people. It was not our nature at that time. Basically, most of the Marines at that time only met combat people. They were not interested in the civilian population or anything like that. Certainly those islands were occupied by the Japanese, but they were, you would say, friendly islands.
Q: Do you remember the first Japanese you met off base?
A: No recollection. I don’t think I ever spoke to a Japanese on that base.. I don’t think I ever met one. They were invisible. I never saw them. The only things we saw were girls. The madams in the, whatchucallem, whorehouses, they were friendly, they were sociable. They were not reluctant to sleep with foreigners. And we paid them.
Q: Talk about the first trip to the geisha house.
A: Well, I tell you. It was just like everybody’s else’s first trip. You know, you don’t know what to expect. Your pecker isn’t standing up with a flag on it because you don’t know whether they’re going to bite it off or cut it off or what. You know, those were not exactly the friendlest people in the world.They were your enemies. So everybody went to the geisha house with one eye looking at the girl and one eye watching the door. You never know what’s gonna happen in the room. We generally went in force—5 or 6 guys together. We were never bare-assed.
I stayed on that base until November 10th . That was the time I met Tyrone Power. I told you that story. Who knew. Tyrone Power came in. He was a captain. Member of a TAG. They had big tags on the side of their C-47’s.. He came in on a C-47. 4 engines. He had a big sign painted on in the front. TAG. And I didn’t know him. And he was walking the hall. I of course was dressed…short pants, no shirt, like that, because, it was very informal in those days. And I says “Hello, captain.” And Jesus, he chewed my ass out. The son of a bitch.
Q: Because you were out of uniform.
A: Everybody was out of uniform. Nobody would wear their stripes. You really weren’t about to show who you were because you never know when somebody is going to shoot at you. …That was really a big problem in Yokosuka, later.. The roads between Tokyon and Yokuska and Oppama and Yokosuka. (Flanked by hills)….Anyway, with Tyrone Power, I said “Hello, cap” to him one morning and I didn’t know him. I mean, you know his face, but you don’t know anything else more than that. And he looked at you and he don’t know you. And he started giving me a bad time for not saluting and not dressing properly. And all that crap, you know. And so, ok. I took the guff, but I was I was the first sergeant. Then he had to check in to my office, and we kept him on his heels for two days, doing nothing. After 2 days, he came in. I let him come in. He met the major. He was the CO of the base. He was the highest rank officer, a major. And Tyrone checked in and the CO said, OK get your duty from the first sergeant. So I gave him air mail duties. Fly the mail in and out. He was a pilot. That’s the worst job you can get. Because, that time, typhoons and bad weather, and you still got to fly. Doesn’t matter how bad it is.
He was a tall good-looking guy. And you got to give him a lot of credit. He did join up and the Marines are a tough organization. But everybody’s a human being. So I gave him the fucking job of flying the mail and he tried many times to be nice to me. He even told me “Why don’t I come to Okinawa. There’s a lot of girls in Okinawa and all that crap.” He was talking about American nurses and things like that. Americans. But we had plenty of Japanese broads right off the base. Who has to go to Okinawa to go sleep with a baba (old hag). Nobody has to describe a young Japanese girl to anybody who knows anything.
He tried to rectify the situation. But anyway, he left. He had too much political influence. He was probably stuck on that job for 2 weeks or 3 weeks and then he goes to the right guy and says, “Let’s get some girls.” He’s a hero now.
Then on November 10th, we left. We got on a ship. Probably Sasebo harbor. And I came up to Yokosuka. And as you would imagine in the movies, you came out of the hold and there was Mt. Fuji. Beautiful Mt., Fuji with all the snow on it. Beautiful day. I can still remember that day. And I now was the Sgt. Major of Opama Base. I was the highest ranking NCO. The one with the longest time. There were 5,000 enlisted men on that base.
I was a very lucky guy. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, but there was a polack there, and he was a staff sergeant and he wanted to be First Sergeant. Actually I replaced him. But he was gung ho. He really liked it. So I said, “Why don’t you be the first sergeant?” You act as first sergeant…in practice.. Only when you’re in trouble you call me and I’ll exert my authority. So he became the unrecognized first sergeant and I become the big playboy. I went out and enjoyed life. And I remember those days, we had a whiskey called “45” Cheap shit. Rotgut. But these black market operators…. And Vitale was a friend of mine. He was running cigarettes from Opama across Tokyo Bay to Chiba. In speedboats. Black market operation. He was a corporal or a PFC. I don’t think you should write his name. But through him, we got all this booze. And the only way you could go off base, was, you had to buy a bottle of booze. And you get a pass to go off the base. It was a luscious business for somebody. So if you buy a bottle of booze, you get a pass to get off the base. Course you only got Wednesday off or Saturday off, or something like that. For a few hours. Because, it was a dangerous area in those days….snipers in the hills shooting at you on the road outside the base…Still in an unfriendly place. ..
Q: Backtracking for a minute. When you went to this so-called geisha house, did you use rubbers there?
A: No such thing. Who cared? Japanese are clean, you know. When you get through they always got the hot towel, wash you down a little bit.
Q: Did they know what a blow job was?
A: Oh, yeah. Of course… Sex, you know, it’s the greatest sport in the world. Between the ages of 30 and 40. Or 15 and 50. I don’t know. I remember when I was in Copenhagen, this fucking broad, I said take a bath and then let’s have sex. She says no. Fucking Europeans are filthy bastards. The Japanese would always go take a bath first. We always took the ofuro (bath), then had sex. Then went back to the ofuro.
We never went alone. There was always 3, 4, 5 of us in one house at a time. There was no other customers anyway. There was no other people left. The ones who had brains, probably ran home to their country.
Q: How did you guys communicate?
A: Oh, you don’t. There was no communication. There was no conversation. It was strictly…everybody knew what you wanted. You know what they wanted. Then there’s always the word of mouth that teaching one guy, who teaches the next guy. First thing you know, it’s like a pyramid. One tells two and two tells four and four tells eight. There was only about 50 of us on the base anyway.
Q: Any funny stories there about the geisha.
A: No…not really. The houses were just like they were in those days. Tatami rooms. Futons on the floor. Wooden bath… Wood, charcoal heated. Nothing special. No high-class whorehouse. The girl took you into the room. You strip. It was a pleasure to take a hot bath. And the girls will climb in with you. But there was more than one guy in the ofuro, always… Then you go in the room, the futon is laid out… One room was like the living room, where you go and sit down. The hibachi is there and you talk to the mama-san and she wants so much money. You give her the money and then you have to wait for the broad to be available.
And then one guy would say, the bath here is terrific. It’s nice to be able to take a Japanese bath. So we got in the habit of follow the leader. One guy takes a bath, he goes upstairs and shacks up. Somebody else takes a bath and it seems to me that the day never ended that way, it kept going and going and going and going. But there couldn’t have been many geisha houses there.
Of course, it’s not a nice word to say geisha, because they are not really geisha. The real geisha girls would be annoyed if you called those Omura girls geisha. Common expression. It took many years to find out that a whore is a whore and a geisha is a geisha. They’re not the same. (note: pronouces it: “hooor”)
Q:Let’s go back to Yokusuka for a minute. What was that like? You live in quonset huts?
A: We lived in concrete buildings. Office buildings or something like that. But that was a plane base. They had the ramps for the sea planes there. And it was an airbase of some sort. And that was part of the Yokusuka base. And we lived in Opama which was part of the same base, a little bit a way, on the same bay. So we went there and that was the first place I got my taste of a Japanese earthquake. Of course, we were tough marines. We weren’t gonna get scared by a building shaking, if the building didn’t break. But the first time you go through it you know you went through it. Then I spent my time there from November 10th, to approximately the middle of February. And I didn’t want to get discharged and go home, because in those days, they used to have the point system, –how many months in service. What your rank was and this that and the other thing. And you get so many points and then they send home groups by the points. But being in an administrative position, I deliberately kept my name off the list, because I had the power to do that. So I used to come up to Tokyo. I used to go to Yokosuka to drink with the other people there. On Yokosuka base. Yokosuka was a big base. But in those days there was no such things as an NCO club, or, what do you call those god damn clubs, the USO clubs? Never heard of them. I don’t think I ever was in a USO club in my 4 years in the Marine corps. I never met anything like that. Then civilians were working in Tokyo. So I came up to Tokyo and I tried to get a job. So, of course, I went to the civilian personnel section. That was in the old Teikoku Bldg. Across the street from the Nikkatsu Hotel. Downtown. I went there. I applied for a job. A 457. And I had no trouble getting a job because of my experience in the military. My rank and everything.
TOKYO GHQ, FIRST WIFE, “PALACE HEIGHTS”
So I discharged myself and got a job in the GHQ as a big fucking CAF 2 payroll clerk. And I lived in the Finance Bldg, which is now the Ministry of Finance. I had a cot there. And I was already fooling around with the woman I married down in Fujisawa. I met her on the train. The attraction was she spoke English. But nobody spoke English in those days, but she was a doctor, she was a DDS…..Anyway, I had a cot in the Finance Bldg. I don’t think I ever slept in the place. And from there we moved into Palace Heights, which was across from the Emperor. Now it’s the Ministry of Justice or the Supreme Court Building? You know them ugly concrete buildings they got there? I think it’s the Supreme Court now. We lived there. We lived in a quonset hut. We had about 14 or 16 beds and the cots.
Q: You and your wife?
A: No, she lived in Kamakura. You know where the Dai-Butsu (Great Buddha Statue) is? On the left side, they got the Okamoto Byoin. I lived in that hospital. My wife’s mother was the chief nurse there. She had a dental office in Tawara. Anyway, in the Finance Building, we used to
Q: She was a dental nurse?
A: A doctor of Dental Surgery. She was a major in the Japanese navy.
Q: How’d you meet her? On the train?
A: I met her on the train. In the old days, when only the U.S. military could ride the train. We had the special car. We let nobody on except the girls. No Japanese man would dare try to get on the train. We used to commandeer the train. Or that particular car. So I used to go from Yokosuka to Tokyo. She used to come up from Yokusuka to go to Ofuna then change to Kamakura. Now, you go straight, don’t you. She used to get on in Tawara, which was about one station away from Yokosuka.
Q: And the women would get on?
A: We’d only let the women on. They’d come on. Some of them. My wife was an educated person and she didn’t have that fear because she speaks English and German and Japanese. I hate to say it but she is an extremely intelligent son of a bitch. But a cold-blooded bastard like the rest of them. But she is more so because she only thinks in terms of skin and bones You know medicine. They don’t think about feelings or people’s attitude….
Q: So how did you hook up with her?
A: She came on the train and I was on the train and I talked to her. And she spoke English. And then, of course, I met her a few times on the train and it became a regular thing and then I got off the train with her and went to her place. And sex is not a problem. And I used to sleep with her in the hospital there. Next to the big statue of the Buddha…She lived in the hospital with her mother…Her mother was the chief nurse.
Q: So where’d you screw her?
A: In the room there, who cares? The mother’s not in the same room. You know they were living in quarters, not the hospital itself. They have a special section for the chief nurse. There was a girl there, a nurse, by the name of Onara. (imeans fart in Japanese)Ain’t that an odd name for a nurse?
Q: And there was no hassle about this? About sleeping with her? I mean, the war had just ended and all.
A: But she was not overly desirous of sex. Even today. Even when I married her. She’d say, “What again?” But I think she was taught to fuck only three or four times a year. Like an animal. But I left her because of that.
But “Palace Heights” in Tokyo, where I’d moved, was a very nice place to live in because we had all the cots. All the girls were sleeping in the cots. You walked into your so called quonset hut and picked anyone you want. And they never said no. And they get in bed. And fuck. In the morning, the lucky ones would stick around and they get to go and have breakfast. They eat the one egg we were allowed to eat. And I guess that that was their greatest payment that was the egg. Cuz they get eggs you know and coffee. Eggs and toast or some shit like that. And we would live on chocolate bars. And PX food. And, of course, you always gave those kids something.
I always said, thank god for the girls. Because I think that if it wasn’t for the girls the whole fucking occupation would collapse.
Q: Where did these girls come from anyway?
A: They were all over. They were just ordinary people. Not the whores. You didn’t know what they were. Most of them were just hungry. They had no income, no place to sleep, no food. They couldn’t go home to wher/eever it was they came from and some of them were just born and raised in Tokyo. And in Tokyo all the homes were destroyed. Most of them, I’d say, were just drifting girls.
But, of course, some of them were smart enough to catch and marry a gaijin. But you know in those days you always had chocolate bars. You gave away the chocolate bars to the kids, the girls. Some of the girls that you slept with, You know in those days it was very hard to tell if the girls was beautiful or not. They had all drabby clothes. They had not make up. They had nothing, those kids….There was no value in beauty. They were just ordinary human bodies. But they were female and we were male. And I imagine they looked at us in the same manner we looked at them. And all the Americans looked the same. One guy’s no different than the other and they all wear the same clothing. But those girls, the smart ones would ask for soap. Of course, soap would be a valuable asset to them if they had a place to use it. And most of them were very glad to get chocolate bars. Very few of them would drink whiskey. And very few of them wanted cigarettes. They were basically young kids. But you couldn’t tell how old they were. You couldn’t tell whether they were 16 or 23 or 36. And you never thought about it, but they were not classified as human beings. There was just another…they were just something else.
But then the situation started to change….this was before I got married. Of course, I was still going down to Kamakura. And I was still working as a fucking payroll clerk, there. And then one day, the Colonel involved there was a Colonel Galloway. She was an personnel officer. Big, good-looking woman. But big. But the female captain that was in charge of the payroll was a Captain Saxon. I don’t know if you want to write that, but she was a lesbian….Galloway, I think she was fooling around with the General Siren (sp?) who was the General Provost Marshal. She was the chief of the civilian personnel section.. My boss was Captain Saxon. She was in charge of the payroll section. And the first job I got was the handling of the CCD payroll which was the Civil Censorship Detachment. And then I learned what life was about. You get these Form 57’s and you got to make a payroll sheet for each guy and how many hours they work and all that baloney, you know. And then you see this new guy, he comes he and he was a lieutenant and he is a GS-7. And he’s 21 years old. You know. And I went to Colonel Galloway and I saw, “Hey Colonel, this guy he’s a GS-7, he’s 21. He’s got no experience. He’s been in the army a short time. He’s a college graduate and they gave him a GS-7. In my outfit he’s lucky if he’s a PFC. We’d probably keep him as a private until he learned, what you know. I can’t see myself sitting here doing this kind of work when these guy’s get sevens. Now I began to see what the payrolls are…..And my rank is a two. Then they promoted me to three, then four, then five. I was not happy. And I told the colonel…
But anyway, I complained and I got a job as a trainee investigator for the GHQ CPC. Civil Property Custodian. And I got a GS-7. And I went to the States and I got a vacation before I started my new job. I qualified for the investigating job because of the corresponding and the questioning that you do as a first sergeant when there’s trouble, you know. You got to ask questions and you got to make a report out. But I was stupid. I didn’t know what a mason was. I didn’t know what a WASP was….You want to know the things against me? I was not a WASP. I was not a Mason. I was not an Army man. I was not an officer. I was married to a Japanese. I was a Catholic. I was an Italian. How many more strikes can a guy get against him?….I was a Catholic, which was a strike. I was in the Marine Corps, which was another strike. I was an enlisted man, which was another strike. I was in love with Japanese girls, especially. Married to one. And that was a strike. And all in all, it was not an easy situation. And there was this prick Colonel Klaus. He was my boss in our field investigation section. We were FIB. Field Investigation Section. And this guy was riffing everybody he got a chance to, until he came to me. I was no. 17. And he tried to riff me too, and Colonel Galloway says, “Zappetti’s a good man. He done twice more work than anybody else did in the payroll section. He is a good man and you can’t fire him. “If you want to fire him, she says, I’ll cut every investigator out.”
So I was secured a position. I got up to about a GS-8. But that was the end. I couldn’t go anymore. And I got time in grade, that’s all I got.
BLACK MARKET, DEPORTATION, GINZA LANSCO GANG
So in 1950, a person named Joe Dibello got caught selling beer or something like that. And Joe told me how to do it. You go down to the PX. You buy an ticket(s) for 25 cases of beer. You go out to the beer factory, you give them the ticket and you get 25 cases. Of beer. So that was…you sell the beer and you make money….You go to the PX, you get a beer coupon, The PX sells beer coupons. You sell 25 and 50 cases and something like that….I don’t know the rules and regulations, but anyway, so,…I did that we did that. And I used to go down there. And I used to get truckloads of beer. They were about 160 yen a bottle in those days or something like that. Half a buck. Big bottle of beer. And me and another guy named Joe Sazaki, we got this fucking Japanese to be the agent. I never met him. I only did it with Joe. I dealt with the Colonel or the Major at the PX. And I got the tickets and I got them under the table. And I paid him a commission for them. Then I gave them to Joe. Joe would give them to the Japanese and they would go down and get the beer and sell it and do what they want. And I’d get a commissioner. I didn’t get big money. But I made money. In those days, my salary was about 3 million yen a year. We’d go down to the beer hall….or beer factory. I know one they had by the Sumida-gawa river. I can’t remember the name of it, but anyway, we used to go there. And the Japanese kid would go there with the tickets and all the CID was over there drinking beer, enjoying life. I supposed to be catching black market operators and here I am sitting with them and I’m one of the black market operators.
Q: You said you sitting drinking in the beer factory with the SID?
A: CID guys. Civil Investigation Department or something. Everybody. And I went there because I was an investigator also. But I was there for different reasons. I was there supervising my truckloads. So I used to do that. And the boys in the offfice knew what I was doing and everybody would contribute. And everybody made money. And everybody has a very short memory. They can’t remember anymore. Most of the guys there were honest investigators. They were spies for the OSI and all that shit. I don’t know. But they’re still colonels.
Q: These CID guys were in uniform or undercover?
A: No, no. Everybody wore civilian clothes.
Q: And that’s how you got your start in the black market?
A: Right. And when they caught this kid. I don’t know how they did it. And he identified the man involved in the thing as Nick Zappetti. He knew the name.
Q: Who was the kid?
A: He was a Japanese kid. Some punk yakuza chimpera. He was the one that Joe Sasaki was dealing with. I never met him, I didn’t know what he looked like. And anyway, so, they caught him. And he told them that I was the guy supplying the tickets. And I was giving them to Joe Sasaki. But Joe was very smart. Joe got on an airplane and left. But dumb Nick stayed there. At the end, it turned out that I did the right thing. Anyway, I stayed there and this kid came to the office one day, and …I think it was General Gilespie, or Colonel Gilespie or something like that, the guy in charge of Civilian Property Custodian, and they had a picture of all the investigators and they said pick Mr. Zappetti out. And instead he picked out Eisenhower’s nephew or cousin or something, because he looked just like Eisenhower. You know almost no hair and reddish bald-headed character or something. So the Colonel threw him out. So then the CID—this kid was getting paid 75 cents a day by them—and then CID educated him as to who was Zappetti. They put him in a car and bring him in and when I’m eating in the dining room, they show him who I am, and so, of course, he identified me who I am from the book and then I met him face to face. The colonel says “This man is accusing you of black marketing.” So, I’m stuck.
So the CID was in the same office as the Civilian Personnel Section there in the Kokubo building, which was across the street from the Nikkatsu Building. They were on the 7th floor. So I just waited one day, in the lobby, waiting for the son of a bitch. And I caught this kid coming in the building. So I got him. And I weighed about 200 pounds. So I took him up to the fucking roof and I beat the living piss out of him. And, of course, they must have taken him to the hospital, cuz I left him on the roof. And sure enough, he went to the hospital for about 2 or 3 weeks. And when he came out again, I caught him again. And I beat the living piss out of him again.
But now, I couldn’t get away no more. They transferred me to a different squadron for court martial proceedures. There I met Lieutenant Frank Campbell. The son of a bitch’n bastard. But anyway, so he said to me, please innocent and we’re gonna find you guilty and give you two years in jail. 3 years in jail or something like that. He says “Please guilty and we’ll only give you a $2,000 fine.”
I says, “You can’t prove I’m guilty. Just somebody said it. You can’t prove I bought tickets. You can’t prove nothing.”
He says, “This is a court martial. We don’t have to prove anything. We can find you guilty.”
So, ok. I took the rap. I paid $2,000, and when I went to the office,,nobody, but nobody offered to pay the fine. Among my business associates.
So Ok. That’s that. So I paid the fine and decided they were going to deport me to the United States. And I had a wife and two kids. So I said I can’t go until my wife and kids are financially situated. And in those days, you had to go to Meijiya market. You had a coupon book where you buy food. You had to use coupons or you can’t buy food. Beginning of April the new coupon books came out. I got the books and they escorted me under guard to the ship. And I was gone. April 1950. Militarily escorted out of the country. I went to New York City.
But before I left, there was a Jewish guy from Brooklyn who worked in cryptographics. He worked in the 81stSignal Corps. In the Sanshin Bldg., which was right near the GHQ Bldg (across from Hibya park). So this guy says when you come in, I’ll change your name on the paper when the forms came in. He showed me the forms. They had a form like that and it said, List 26. Commercial Entrants. I had all the names. And they would scrutineeze these names. And if it was ok, they could put a stamp on it. So everybody on Form 26 came in. Or they’d scratch out a name. So my name came in Nicolas V. Zappetti. It was completely changed. So it was approved.
So I went to the local Italian congressman’s office and asked for help in getting a new passport and they threw me out. So I went to the local Mafia boys on 118th and they got me my passport and I came to Japan.
And I flew Northwest airplane from New York to Tokyo. It took 44 fucking hours. Believe me that’s a long time to sit in an airplane. And I imagine it was a DC-4. And I was sitting on.. .New York to Canada to Alaska to Kiska, into Tokyo…And while I was on the airplane, there was a very intelligent man sitting behind me in a white suit, with a white panama hat, and the airplane stopped somewhere at some military base in fucking Alaska or somewhere like that and there was a whole goddamned troops out there, everybody meeting him. I saw the troops out there and I said, “Son of a bitch, they found out I’m on the airplane. God Damn it. I’m gonna get deported again.”
And I sat in my seat and said I’m just gonna keep my mouthy shut and hide. But you can’t hide on an airplane. Where can you hide? You can’t hide under the seats, you know. So, of course, I’m watching everything very carefully. And this old man and his wife, they get out of the airplane and they are met down at the bottom of the steps. They shake hands, this that and the other thing. So he came back up again. And we’re flying. And the same thing happened in Kiska. And things like that. And so I asked him. “Who are you? Why you get all this receptions?”
He says, “My name is John Foster Dulles”
How about that?
And he looked like a country preacher. But I can tell you something. That man was an intelligent son of a bitch. He’d say one sentence and you sit there and you could think about paragraphs. That’s how he was so concise in his English and so perfect. He was really an intelligent mother. He was with his wife.
So anyway I got to Tokyo and I didn’t have to worry about it because when he got off the airplane all the dignitaries and everybody else went with him. He was a fucking important person. And I got off the airplane last, with my tail between my legs and I disappeared.
So I went down to Fujisawa where I lived and it might have been about June 15th or June 10th, because the Korean War broke out right around that day. June 20, 1950. And I guess he was making a diplomatic mission to Korea or someplace like that. I don’t know what he was doing, but anyway…but I remember, cuz I was sitting in my house and I didn’t know what to do for a living. I had very little money. I fooled around in Tokyo. Then, I decided to become a real black market operator. And I went into the Ginza, down by Senbikiya, a famous store on the Ginza, and I opened a little company called Lansco. Probably an unregistered company. That was an abbreviation for Leo, Adams, Nick, Senbikiya, and Company. Leo is Russian, now living in Mowcow. His name is Leo Yuskoff. Adams was a guy called Victor Adams. He was a lieutenant. He was a dumb son of a bitch. So we moved into that place and we operated from there. We built a store downstairs, and that was our front. Our real business was selling dollar checks. I had one big shipping account. At one time, I had two million dollars in the Bank of America. Imagine that? Never stole a fucking penny. That was all from a company called C.F. Sharpe. I don’t think you should write that name down. And they paid me two million dollars, I put it in the bank. And that enabled me to write checks. And I wrote dollar checks. And I sold the checks and got yen.
See, dollars at that time were maybe 480 520 for a dollar. But the (official) rate was 360. So you sell the dollar checks to somebody—some Japanese businessman who needs dollars, cuz they were tough to get in those days with all the restrictions– and they give you maybe 500 yen. And you give the shipping company maybe like 420, 430. You know, those were big checks and you can make 60 yen on a check per dollar; you’re talking about a lot of money. And, of course, we had a lot of fun those days.
Q: C.F. Sharpe was a shipping company?
A: Yes, but don’t use that name. They’re still here, you know… So, anyway, we used to do that.
Q: How long did this go on?
A: A few years. And, of course, I graduated from that and I started writing phony dollar checks. for 10% of the face value. And I signed Franklin Delanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. I signed any fucking name. And I get 10% of the face value.
Q: Who were your customers?
A: You know, yakuza would come over and want to buy a dollar check. He says I got a man who wants to buy a check for $3,000. I says, Ok, I write it, I give him the check, I get 10% cash And I’m selling it to him because he has another buyer, somewhere you needs dollars, or who wants to sell to someone else.. So I never meet the buyers down the line. I write the check, because I can write English.. And the yakuza sells the check for 480 or 500 or some shit like that. We used Bank of America paper. The we started writing checks on non-existent banks. We had these fucking checks on a bank in Texas but t there was no such bank.
We did other shit too. I remember one day we wound up with a lot of ball gum. You know the kind you put in a machine. We had thousands of pounds of it. We picked up. We went around trying to sell ballgum. We couldn’t sell ballgum. Japanese shopkeepers had never seen gumballs before. They didn’t like the colored dye coming off on their hands. They said the taste didn’t suit the Japanese. Also, we didn’t have any of the dispenser machines. Just boxes of ballgums. So we hired a group of yakuza guys from the Tosei-kai on the Ginza to go around to all the people who didn’t want to buy the ballgum, Okachimachi. The Tosei-kai was the gang of ethnic Koreans. They were in a war with this Japanese gang the Sumiyoshi-kai for control of the city. Their caries their .38’s around, with their knives and short swords. They had tattoos, bad teeth. They were some scary guys. We hired about 4 of them to go around town and everyone they wanted to buy ballgum. And suddenly everybody says they want ball gum. So we created a market for people to buy ballgum. And we got rid of the fucking ballgum. We made a nice big fat profit on it. They bought it from us and they couldn’t sell it to anybody. We created a market. I’ll never forget that manoeuvre.
We also sold Zippo lighters and nylon stockings, by the box. Sacks of sugar. Cartons of spaghetti. We sold 4,000 pounds of spaghetti in one day. .That office was a lot of fun, because of the three Russians that we had,…now Nick “Butch” Bobrov works for Radio Moscow. Or he did. His wife Nina worked for the Russian Intourist Bureau of Moscow. Leo Yuskoff . Leo was a character. This guy used to go to bed with a bottle of sake and wake up empty. He was a strong boozer. The only guy I knew who drank while he was asleep. They were all White Russians. Stateless Russians, born and raised in Japan…. Leo was about ten years older than me. I was 25-30. 32-33 years old. He was about 40. But Butch was younger than me. And George Trentieff was younger than me.
Butch and George Trentieoff wanted to go back to the Motherland. decided one day to row to Russia. They decided that they want to be Russians. And they had a red Dodge. And they drove all the way up to Wakkanai, Hokkaido, tip of Japan. They stole a boat. And they were actually row across the straits to Russia. Except the currents got different ideas up there. And he says one time they were rowing up there and they went right by a Russian patrolboat, but they couldn’t be seen because of the fog. They could hear the voices in Russian. So when they landed, they thought they were in Russia. But, instead, they were back in Hokkaido. Then, of course, they got arrested by the CIA. As Russian spies. And communists. And these are just 18-year old kids. Anyway, this is 1955, 56, they’re 18 year old then… They landed back in the same place. Back in Hokkaido. Can you believe that? Arrested as espionage. Spies. Can you imagine? The had to pay a lawyer to get them out of that case, a lawyer named Hinoya, who was in Sapporo.
I remember those days these three guys, they really didn’t wanna be Stateless no more, They wanted to have a country of their own. And the girl Nina, these are all Kobe people, you know. And these four people would sit in my office all day long writing applications to become Russian citizens. They were in my office everyday for months.Years probably. They were part of my company. Leo was. The other two were just black market. The Russian Embassy in Azabu over here would never give them a bad time for black marketing. The American government couldn’t touch them because they were allies. And if they did do anything, then the Russian Embassy would protect them. But the Russian government only wanted them to disrupt the economy. But don’t fuck around with a fight in the street or something like that. Black marketing or anything to disrupt the economy and overthrow the capitalist system was fair hunting. So we used them to black market. Leo was a smart son of a bitch. He could read and write Japanese fluently. said he was going to get rich and destroy capitalism. Leo wound up in Siberia somewhere or something like that. They knocked his teeth out cuz he got in trouble with the KGB.
Nina was Nick’s wife. She was a young girl, 18 years old. And this girl says that when they go to Russia, they are going to have children and give them to the state. That must have been the propaganda in those days. I said you mean you’re going to go through childbirth and have all the pain, and then you’re going to give the baby away? She says yes. For the motherland. Crazy. Now she works for Intourist. George is about 50 years old today. He’s got a yakitori place in Ichinohashi. One of these days I’ll take you there and you can meet him…
Anyway, one day in the mid-50’s, the CID came and raided the office. with all those Japanese police. And the police are going crazy. They see these three big fucking metal boxes on the desk full of money—one’s got dollars, one’s got yen, one’s got MPC. And I had a book, one of these big ledgers, where I made all my transactions. But I didn’t use page one, two, three. I used on page, and then maybe 15 pages later I used another page. So if you went through the book it would be hard to find a chronological order of what’s happening. So anyway, so, they arrested this new guy who’d joined Lansco, a big dumb Australian named Bowen, because he was the only one with dollars and MPC in his pocket at the time, which were illegal. And son of a bitch if I didn’t have to take my last three million yen and bail the bastard out of jail to keep him from talking. So we went out of business. We had no money. I wound up virtually broke.
But after I got through laundering money and selling phony checks and black market, I met a guy by the name of Tom Duncan. You can write his name because I don’t give a shit. But anyway. Tom Duncan was the manager of the old Kaiji Billet. Which is now the Kaijo building. The Kaijo Insurance Company down by Tokyo Station, And he was the club manager and I used to rent slot machines for $100 a month. And I used to take them to my home which was by Shinagawa Station and I used to play with these machines and I used to figure out how they operated—some pieces would break, I used to take them out. Make the machine work again. And I placed these machines in the hotels, in the R&R days.The Americans would come in. Get a girl for a week. They called them “onlies.” They don’t want to call them whores. They call them onlies because the girl only stays with them exclusively for one week.
So somehow or other I got involved with a hotel called the Hotel New York in Mukojima. And I put slot machines in there. And I used to let the girls, “the onlies” work out of there. I can’t remember why or how. I can’t remember if that was after I got arrested. Anyway, I had 7 slot machines. And I was living with Yoshiko . And I was doing very good. And I put bugs on the machines so you could never hit anything strong. One day I would knock off the jackpot, and the next day I would knock off the 3 bells. I learned how to use the machine without paying money out. Nobody cared about winning. They just wanted to play. And get laid.
Then there was a prick by the name of Frank Scolinas. A lawyer.
And, I used to work for him as an investigator, at times. Certain work I would do for him. And he knew about my machine operation. And he got in touch…Service Games got involved. They were not even in Japan. And through Frank Scolinas, they got into the slot machine business. And they became very big worldwide. And he got them into Japan or something like that. And then one day a guy by the name of John MacFarland came along. He was a big mother. A war hero. AC-DC. Then he got into professional wrestling in Japan and became rather well known.. And because I got to know him, he decided he was going to steal the Imperial Hotel Diamonds. You ready for that story?
IMPERIAL HOTEL DIAMOND ROBBERY
John was in Iwo Jima. He was in World War II. And he went from private to lieutenant in one day combat in Iwo Jima. He got his head fucked up or something. He was 6’4” and he weighed 250 or 260. And he moved into Room 301. Probably one of the best rooms in the hotel. That’s the Old Imperial. So anyway while he’s in the room, he goes downstairs…we planned together this… he decides he’s going to steal the Imperial Hotel diamonds. Ok, let’s steal the Imperial Hotel Diamonds.. AC-DC John. Naturally, knows a lot of queer boys. And they used to come and visit him. To buy hamburgers and what not. And he used to pass out 5,000 yen tips. And in those days, 5,000 yen was a lot, a lot of money. It could have been three months, four months pay for people. So you can get an idea of what 5,.000 yen was. So anyway, we talked and decided how to steal the diamonds. I say ok, the guys bring the diamonds up, we show ‘em some money. And reject the diamonds and just find out what they like to drink. And the second time they come up, we load their drinks with knockout pills, put money on the table like we’re going to pay, I hide in the other room. Mac serves the drinks and knocks them out. Mac pretends to be knocked out too. So I take all the diamonds. Take all the money. Clean the room out. Take the money out of Mac’s wallet and throw it on the floor. And leave. And we hook up later. It was a good idea, cuz the first guy that wakes up, the other two guys are out and there’s no money and no diamonds. And so the question is what would you do? Would you call the police? Would you call the hotel manager. Would you call your boss downstairs? And they come up and find the other two guys out? And you’re not out? You say, “What did you do?” I said, “I didn’t do anything.” They’re out. What did you do? So, the first guy can’t move., The 2nd guy wakes up. And he says to the first guy what did you do? You knocked that guy out. And you knocked me out. Cuz I just woke up. And you’re awake. So you took the money and the jewelry and you did everything yourself. You son of a bitch. Maybe you remember some conversation you had.. You never know what two clerks will talk about, especially when you’re dealing with diamonds. I like this one or I like that one. Then MacFarland wakes up last. Instantly. He knows what’s going on. He accuses both the salesmen. He says, You son of a bitch. You stole my money. I’m gonna call the police. So it was a good idea. So now, I ventured into my first crime. My first real crime. So MacFarland, we got it all planned and everything. And then at the last minute the son of a bitch says to me, I want a gun. I say,”What do you need a gun for? You’re 6’4”. You weigh 250 pounds. Japanese, you just get them and bounce their heads together, you don’t need a gun.” I said, “A gun is a violent act. That’s crazy.”
He says, “No, I gotta have a gun.”
I said, “If you gotta a gun. I’m out. I don’t want nothing to do with it.”
He said, “If you don’t get me a gun, I’m gonna say that you are partners with me.”
So it was a terrible threat. Because he would do it. I’d seen him fly off the handle all of a sudden. We’re driving down the street. He’s whistling a song. Or talking about politics or something, And all of a sudden he’s pounding the dashboard with his fists, yelling, screaming, cutting up his hands. He could be a very scary guy. And I didn’t want him against me, because he was a queer and queers can get awfully fucking vicious.
So I called a friend of mine up and I said I need a gun. And this guy was a civilian, a GS-15 in the military. Anyway, so I got a gun from him. .38 special. And I made a mistake. I gave it to a fucking Japanese Korean kid whose father is the manager editor of the Yomiuri Sports paper. Hochi. The Hochi. His name is Yamamoto…They called him “The Mambo Kid” because he used to walk around in these red and black mambo dancer clothes, pantaloons, fluffy shirts, pompadour hair. I gave the gun to the kids. And he brought it to MacFarland and gave it to MacFarland.
So MacFarland called the diamond guy up from the Hotel Arcade. But just one guy came up. He brought up the diamonds and Mac just lost it, hit him in the fucking head. The Mamobo Kid was there in the other room. He helped tie the salesguy up and dump him in the bathtub. Took the diamonds. Walked out of the hotel. Mac even signed some autographs for professional wrestling fans in the lobby. Can you imagine a guy with dyed red hair, 6”4” 260 pounds, walking down the fucking street, signing autographs, after just committing a robbery. He and the Mambo Kid split up.
Mac had the the gun in his pocket, he had the diamonds in another pocket. And he went down and just walked around Tokyo. And he went to Gsell’s. Irene’s restaurant. Gasell. (?) And this was down in Nihonbashi. You know, on the corner of Showa Dori. She hada downstairs Russian-Hungarian restaurant or some fucking thing like that. You know that place? You can put their name in there because I don’t give a fuck. Anyway, Mac goes in the place and he sits at the counter. And the gun is in a brown paper bag. He leaves it on the god-damn barshelf. Bar counter. And when he leaves he forgets the gun. Paul Gasell, the son of that fucking thing. You can’t blame him what he did. He picked up the brown paper bag and every dope would know it’s a gun. And you could feel it. And the weight is there. You know, guns are very heavy….Anyway her son calls the police.
And it took them until 8 o’clock at night to catch this guy. And they caught him in the Latin Quarter. Sitting at the bar having a drink, without the diamonds, which he had ditched some place. . Mac was there for his own demented reason. He didn’t like the manager of the Latin Quarter, Al Shattuck. Shattuck was an ex-intelligence guy who was running the place for Ted Lewin, a big Mafia guy representing Meyer Lansky in the Far East. Lewin’s co-owner in the LQ was a famous ultranationalist thug Yoshio Kodama, who had pillaged China for the Tojo Government during the war and was the money behind the ruling party in Japan, the Liberal Democratic Party. All of them were also working for the CIA, which was also backing the LDP against the Socialist Party. The place crawling with spies and gangsters. And there was an illegal casino in back.
Mac and Shattuck had had this money problem, cause Mac gave Al Shattuck a check for $2,000 and the check bounced. And Shattuck was bad mouthing him about it. That was a big thing because Shattuck was a very famous name here around town. So there was this bad feeling between Shattuck and MacFarland because of the $2,000 check. Mac says, “I’ll get him.” It was demented all right, but that was how he would get his revenge against Shattuck.
He sat there and drank his drink and waited for the cops to find him. Then when they showed up to arrest him, he said, “I gave the diamonds to Shattuck.” Oh Jesus Christ. And Shattuck, that particular day, the poor bastard, went to Manila, that same fucking night, Shattuck went to Manila. And, the cops thought he’d left with the diamonds. And then it all unraveled. They arrest the Mambo Kid who then fingers me and then they come to get me. And they arrested Shattuck when he came back.
It’s a bizarre thing to do, but you got to remember that remember this guy is a psycho. He got hit in the head during World War II. He was actually a smart guy, he could talk to you real good, but then his fucking brain would snap. Ra, ra, ra, ra, ra like that. Scared the living piss out of you. But he was a psycho. What do you call it a sizzophriziac?
Q: Schizophrenia.
A: Schizophriziac. Cuz one time, he’s ok and another time he’s different see. And he married the daughter of Yasuda. You know the Yasuda zaibatsu family. That’s a big fucking deal in Japan, like Mitsubishi, Mitsui. . He married the Yasuda family daughter and I don’t know what happened to that marriage. You know the Yasuda zaibatus family. Yasuda batteries and what not. And he was still playing with queers.
So anyway, they caught him in the Latin Quarter. 8 o’clock at night. And they brought him in. So, anyway, through interrogation and through different things, they got the Mambo Kid and all the queer boys in jail. All of them in different jails. And all of them said the same thing The Mambo Kid did: “This crime was planned by Mr. Zappetti.” Nice kids. Well, I cannot deny that I was involved in the conversation, but I was not involved in the fucking robbery..
Q: So you didn’t split the profits with him?
A: We never got that far. I told him I wanted out. He goes ahead on his own, with the Mambo Kid. Then he used the stolen diamonds to screw Al Shattuck, who wound up spending a fucking year in jail, screaming that he’d never touched the damn things… Shattuck’s wife, this big blond haired busty singer from Las Vegas wound up having to blow this Japanese judge to get him out of prison. Mac went to prison too, for six years. But he sure fucked Shattuck. They recovered part of the diamonds, buried in some guy’s back yard, but they never got all of them, and never found out what happened to them.
And all of Mac’s fucking queer boy friends were saying that I did it. They found me and they arrested me.
TOKYO JAIL
Q: So what happened to you?
A: They kept me in the Marunouchi police station, the main police station. And then they moved me to Kosuge Prison. Because the case was getting so big there was no place to hide the witnesses. So they don’t talk to each other, you know… So I was at Kosuge prison, and a very, fucking depressing place.
Kosuge prison has got those big fucking walls, you know. And I got solitary confinement, one man to a room. Did you ever go to prison? Did you ever see how they operate a fucking prison? This fucking place had a bed. It was a small room. It’s a small room. 6’ by 9’ and the bed takes 6 by 3, and then they had a little walk and then over here they had the toilet seat. Then they had a sink and you covered the sink. And you sit on the toilet seat all day long. And that was your home, you know. And I used to lay in bed…and they got peek windows they look in and if they see you laying in bed., they’d come in there. They couldn’t really do anything to me, because I was not convicted of any crime. I was just there because the other police stations were crowded. And in the police, word moves, you know. You can easily talk from one person to another even though he is in a different place.
They questioned me every day. I say I don’t know nothing. I don’t know nothing about no plan or no gun. . And I think I was there 28 days on bread and water. It was a miserable fucking life. And the bread you got, they gave you jam. And peanut butter with sugar in it. And a cheap, cheap grade of jam. I never forget, it was gray. And I couldn’t eat this shit. And I used to give it to the Japanese. And they were so glad. They get to eat something different. You know, they get hot water and rice.
And they give me hot water with the bread and jam. And I couldn’t eat it. They wouldn’t give me cold water. Japanese all drink hot water. But that’s what I had for 28 fucking days. Green tea.
You ever hear of a writer by the name of Linclon Stephens? He’s a very famous country writer. A newspaper editor. You should check him out. He’s got a book that he wrote. It was the only English book in the whole prison. So I read that every day. Lincoln Stephens was a son of a bitch who knew everybody. He met Hitler and Mussolini and he’s got all their pictures. I’ll never forget that cocksucker. When he was only 6 or 7 years old he was riding horses in the Midwest. He helped women deliver their babies. He was Jesus Christ when he was 7 years old, you know. But anyway, I read that book. About what a great do-gooder he was, and here I’m sitting in the fucking prison—real prison, you know...
(Yells to his restaurant waiter) Turn that fucking music off….I got an estimate on fixing this place. Did I tell you? I’m gonna do it. But anyway.
So I was there, 28 days on bread and water. Finally I had to go along with what my lawyer recommends. So I had to take a rap. And there was a choice between the gun charge and the Imperial Hotel Robbery. Well, I’m guilty of the gun charge. But not guilty of the robbery. So I decided, ok, I’ll take the beating on the gun rap. Now the gun rap automatically deports you. But I also used a lot of “influence.” Cost me $800. My lawyer got the court to find me guilty of illegal possession of a gun. And they gave me 8 months in jail and a suspended sentence for 3 years. And a 50,000 yen fine or some shit like that.
So I sent a telegram to New York to my father to send me money. It’s a kangaroo court. I remember I went before the judge, my first two days. And they looked at me and I got a beard and a dirty look and whatnot. And I asked the judge is it all right if I look presentable, because you’re dressed, you got a shirt, you got a tie. You got a clean shave. I look like a pig. And I don’t feel comfortable talking to you unless I’m clean. And he like he said, “Ten days.” He didn’t give a shit what I said. So I got 10 days detention. 10 days later, I went up and I asked the judge the same thing. I would like to present myself in the proper manner. And he said “Ten days.” And I said like “Fuck you you son of a bitch.” So I got 22 days. Then 22 days became 32 days… Or some shit like that. I don’t know. I stayed there a long time. They marched me down to American Express, to pick up my father’s check. I’m in handcuffs. Three cops. One holding a rope tied around me. Right in the heart of downtown. People fucking staring at me. Did it twice. $500 bucks each time… The Amex manager came over and bowed to me and said, “Please don’t ever come here again.” Fuck him.
YOSHIKO 2
So in prison, I made friends with a cop. I say where’s my girlfriend. The guy says, “Oh, she’s up in Kosatsu skiing with another guy.” I said, Oh, that’s nice, that’s a real nice girl. And I said, “You sure.” And he says, “Oh, yeah, we keep tabs on everybody.”
So I got out, I weighed 147 pounds. I had my father send $500 twice. So I had a thousand bucks, which the lawyers properly stole. But I did come out with some money. I had some money in my pocket, I took a train. I went up to Kosatsu. I went into the ski lodge where she told me she was at. And I could see her. She’s there with her brother and his wife. And her new boyfriend. You know. Now, mind you, I was only gone for a month. So I went in the place. She didn’t recognize me. I had a suit on. A dress shirt and tie. A mustache. I was 147 pounds instead of 220. So you can imagine,who the fuck would recognize me. So I go in there, see Yoshiko and say, “Yoshiko!” She’s looking around, she hears my voice, she knows it’s me. But she can’t see me. Because there a lot of people up there skiing.” Yoshiko!” I stood no more than 5 feet away from her and turn my back and say, “Yoshiko” and she looked all around. And finally she figured out, that’s Nick. And she ran upstairs. And this guy ran after her. And I ran after him. And they got up to the second floor. And this guy jumped off the fucking balcony into the snow. And I jumped off the balcony into the snow after the son of a bitch. And that was the end of him. Japanese guy… .So anyway, so we all came back to Tokyo together. Now, I found that my house was empty. Her father took all the stuff out of the house. And here I am. I got money in my pocket but no place to sleep. No more girlfriend. And I wanted to fuck because I didn’t fuck for 3-4 weeks. 5 weeks. My broad was a great fuck. She suck me and make my brains blow out. She was great. The greatest piece of ass I ever had. Or one of the greatest pieces of ass I ever had…..so I couldn’t get near her no more. I went to Meguro. They had this pachinko parlor there that I introduced them to…. I made them so fucking riche…It’s still there. Hyakumon dollar pachinko. Takaishi Kogyo or something like that….When you go to Meguro Station, you go in, it’s the building right in front. Stations on the leftside…..
FIRST WIFE
Q: When you started dating the girl you married…your first wife, was there any opposition to that? People say stuff to you?
A: Oh, yes. Oh yes. You want me to tell you a cute story? I was walking with this first wife of mine down in Yokosuka. And mind you I was a well-built strong son of a bitch. And there were six or seven Japanese and they called her a “pansuke.” (whore) You don’t hear that expression very often, do you… young guys. Punks. I went right at them. It didn’t take me long to deck them. And the MPs came. And they took me and my wife away. They said you can’t stay there. It’s too dangerous. And I say shit, dangerous my ass.
Q: That was in the town?
A: Right in Yokosuka town. Right in the streets.
Q: How about on the American side? People say shit to you like you can’t marry a goddamn Jap. Goddamn slant-eyed.
A: Well, when I married my wife, the American military..HEILARY..or whachyoucallit
The wheels, they didn’t believe her. They came, they interview you, you know. They interview her. They say, you marrying him so you can go to the States? She says no. They say so why you marrying him. She say I want to marry him. She don’t say love…But then she says, I’m a Japanese doctor. My duty is to assist my Japanese people, medically. And I have no intention of going to the United States. You know, she never went to the United States. With all the fucking money she’s got, the last place she goes on a tour is America. She’s been all over the world, you name it. She won’t go to the States… cuz they thought she married me so she could go to the States. A ticket to the United States. She never forgot it… But you know things like that make the Japanese anti-American….
My son is anti-American. Jesus.
Q: Back in the postwar era did people try to dissuade you from marrying a Japanese?
Your friends?
A: No, in those days. 1945, 46, 47. If you were lucky you go with a Japanese. Cuz they had American broads. They used to call the Kaijo Hotel. The old joke used to go, “I hear they’re going to close the Kaijo Hotel.” You say why? And the answer is “Because it’s full of cracks.” And cracks is a woman. It was a woman’s billet and it was full of cracks. But nobody would go with an American service girl. They were mean, ugly tough son of a bitches. The Japanese were dainty, sweet… But like you, your own history, if your wife was like an American tough broad, would you marry her?
Q: Nobody in the State, your relatives said, “You idiot,” you know?
A: Oh well…
Q: I mean I got that when I got married.
A: Of course, but you’re not gonna talk to me like that. I was a mean mother fucker. You couldn’t say that to me. Jesus Christ, you know. You know my answer would be: “Hey, there were no girls in those fighter planes that bombed Pearl Harbor. We didn’t fight the women of Japan, we fought the Japanese army… Only in the French Army half the army is men. The other half are queers…(laugh). That’s a joke… Rossi and Allen asked that question. How many men in the French Army? The guy says half… So I think in the beginning, we were pro-Japanese women who were anti-Japanese men. But I don’t even remember men. I remember kids. But the men kept a very very low profile. But they were harboring hate.
Q: There wasn’t a law against marrying a Japanese in the beginning? Oriental Exclusion Act or something like that?
A: No, not exactly a law. You had to get their permission. So, you know like when I went to the American Embassy…now that had to be, my first son was born in 1948… So I imagine I got married in 1947. He was born in May. So if you go back 9 months or so, that’s when I probably got married… The script that CBS News Show with me in it probably says that. But ifyou say Why didn’t you get married before that? There could have been something that stopped you from getting married. There could have been because everybody got married about the same time. I asked the CBS guy was I the only guy that got married? Was I the first guy to get married? He said No. So there must have been other people that got married ahead of me, but how many…a couple of days?
Q: So you had the right to take your wife to the States if you wanted?
A: Of course.
Q: Your wife became an automatic citizen.
A: Well, I don’t know if they become an automatic citizen, but they had the automatic right to go to the States.
Q: There was some law against Japanese then. I can’t remember what it was. (Note: The Oriental Exclusion Act). You could get married…../It was right after the war in then 40’s sometime. You could get married to them, but you couldn’t bring them back to then States. You couldn’t bring them in the country physically.
A: Probably. It would make common-sense, because I got deported in 1950. And I didn’t bring my wife back. Of course, we owned our own house down in Kugenuma at Fujisawa.
What other questions you got?
FIRST TOKYO RESTAURANT
Q: Let’s go back to when you got out of jail…you’d had that fight at the police station; you’d split up with your girl. And you were broke and you were looking around for something to do. Is that how the famous Nicola pizza house was born?
A: No, Nicola pizza house was born because in jail you get bread and water. And you are hungry. And you think about all the nice things you like to eat like spaghetti. Pizza was not a big thing in those days. And when I got out of jail, a Korean friend of mine, a Korean of all people, allowed me to stay at his house and fed me. Suggested it.
1956. I got arrested about 25th of January. The crime was committed on the 15th. So
they put me in jail about the end of the month. I stayed in jail about 28 days or 38 days. Because they arrested Shattuck. They thought he had the diamonds. They let me go…. MacFarland said he gave Shattuck the diamonds… But you know it’s a ridiculous thing. In the States they wouldn’t put you in jail because somebody else says I gave him the diamonds. You know, they’d want more proof than your word….But you know, the Japanese have an expression: “You two rats came out of the same hole.” So you’re both no fucking good.
But Shattuck was 100% innocent. I got up on the witness stand for him and said ‘he’s innocent.” But it’s dangerous for me to say that because it looks like I’m the guilty one and he’s not. You know. But they still sent him to prison and then they deported him. Kicked him out of the country. Wouldn’t let him come back. Shattuck was the first guy to take over the Latin Quarter. In the Hotel New Japan. The Latin Quarter that’s built that. Shattuck built that thing. Al Shattuck. He was a CID man.
Q: Ok. Now so you stayed at a Korean ‘s house. What happened?
A: Well, he was in the pachinko business. He took care of me, but I had to make a living. The only thing I can do…what can I do. I can only cook. What other thing can I do. I can’t get a job in Japan. Americans won’t give you a job. I can’t speak the language. I had no professional skills. So the only thing I could think of doing was make a small restaurant. Because when you’re in jail, you’re hungry, and you only think about food. So, I decided to make a restaurant. But in those days, I was a member of the American Legion. And the American Legion office is where Dr. Aksenoff is today. The International Clinic. That used to be the American Legion club. And that’s owned by a Russian. But, of course, America was pro-Russian in those days…(ed. Huh?)…So I used to look out the window and I would see this tailor Wu. And I figured out that that would be a good place to get to make a restaurant. And I went there with that object and I got the place. I told you I had to pay the rent every single day. I conned the Chinese into moving upstairs and I’ll build a second floor for him.
Q: You had to pay the rent every single day?
A: I had no money. The guy wouldn’t give me the keys to open the front door unless I gave him the rent for a day. The first month I grossed 75,000 yen and I didn’t lose any money.
Q: Where’d you get the money to open the place?
A: I went around to certain people. I can’t remember who they are and asked them to lend me 100,000 yen. And I picked up I think 700,000 yen which was a lot of money in those days. And that 700,000 yen got me to move into the place. Fix the place. And I made a restaurant. And in a very short time I gave everybody an average of about 15% a year on their loan to me. And I paid everybody off. The only son of a bitch who wouldn’t loan me any money was a guy named Warren J. Delvecchio. He’s dead now, the son of a bitch. But this guy was a corporal in the Marines when I was down in Opama. And he asked me to get him discharged. So I discharged him. He went up to GHQ. He was a chemical engineer. And he was a GS-7. And I was a GS-2 or 3, by that time. And he looked at me and he said, “I’m a 7.” And then when I went to Delvecchio, I said, “Warren, lend me some money.” He had a job with …what god damned company…He had a good job as a chemical engineer. And he was in ESS. Economic Scientific….something like that. And he says “Lend you a 100,000. I can buy you for a 100,000.” My buddy. The guy I got discharged with. The Italian.
So I made my restaurant and I made a lot of money and I paid back everybody. It took me two years to go out. Imagine that. I worked every single day for 2 years. And I slept in the restaurant for 2 years. On the tables and chairs.
Q: You didn’t have an apartment?
A: I had an apartment that Joe Dibello let me use but there was no electricity in it. So I had to use candles. But most of my nights were spent in then fucking restaurant, cuz I was half drunk, tired. I used to take 13 yen baths. Go to a public bath house and take 13 yen baths.
Q: What kind of apartment did you have?
A: Well, it was a Turkish Bath House. You know the old-style Turkish Bath. I don’t know what they got today. And it was in Atago-cho down the street. And the reason it had no electricity is because they had these tremendous meters. What do you call them? They put them on telephone poles. What do you call those things? This was had like 50 kilos or 100 kilos. Just the charge with not even using electricity was fantastic. So all the electricity was cut off. So I had gas.
(End Tape)
Q: Did you cook all the stuff yourself?
A: Oh, yeah. I was the cook, the KP, the bottlewasher, the bartender, Everything. Every single thing I did I did myself….(eyes pretty girl walking into restaurant)…Ohhh, wonderful!
Q: Did you have any waiters or anything?
A: Well, I only had 6 tables. And the woman I married was my first waitress. My first cashier. You know, the one I got now. She came to work about 2-3 weeks after I opened.
…My 2nd and 4th wife. The one who’s got everything now. (laugh)
Q: When was this that you opened Nicola’s?
A: August 1, 1956.
Q: So between Jan and Aug of 1956, you got arrested, went to jail, broke up with Yoshiko, tried to commit suicide, met wife #2, married her and opened a restaurant.
A: I didn’t marry her in 1956. Because the first wife wouldn’t give me a divorce. So I married her later. Probably Showa 40. (1965). Listen, I opened the restaurant in Showa 30. That’s 1956. (author’s note. He means Showa 31). And there…I got divorced from my first wife somewhere after that. So I might have got divorced… One time I had the dates all written down. In one of my telephone books somewhere. All the dates written down. When I got married. When I got divorced. When I got married. When I got divorced. But I did all those things in a six-month period. More. 8 months. 9 months…
Q:So you got an divorce in 1956-1957?
A: No, probably later than that because she wouldn’t give me a divorce. But then I went to jail for robbery. Wait a minute. I think I must of got a divorce… one of these days I’ll have to look in one of the books to see which day I got a divorce. The American Embassy has got the information of course.
Q: She wouldn’t give you a divorce until you went to jail?
A: Then she lost face. But I made headlines. Nobody steals from the Imperial Hotel without their name and pictures in the paper. Jesus Christ. …Probably on tv and everything else.
Q: Every night you went out with a different woman. You were dating your first wife then?
A: No. I was married. I was living with a mistress. Yoshiko. Then when I got through with her I went into the restaurant business,
Q: And wife #2 was also wife #4. Were you living with her then?
A: Oh, yeah. I live with anybody.
Q: But you were always out screwing with some women every night?
A: Of course. Why not.
Tokyo Junkie 
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