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.
TOKYO UNDERWORLD ZAPPETTI INTERVIEW TAPE SAMPLING D (26,434 words, 49 pps)
(TAPE 12) Nicola Interview Nov 16, 1989)
(Includes, not necessarily in this order : CPC Investigations+King of Korea+Sex, Black Market Liquor Etc., Ginza Machii, Pimping-Hotel New York, Ginza Machii, Yokota Gang & TSK, King of Korea, , Trade-D. Trump)
SIDE A
OMURA (GETTING YEN)
(RED LIGHT YOSHIWARA & OTHER OCCUPATION TALES)
(POSTWAR GI BEHAVIOR)
(YOKOSUKA FIGHT)
ADD REVERSE COURSE BLURB
(CPC INVESTIGATIONS) (KING OF KOREA) (SEX)
(NARCOTICS)
(BLACK MARKET BEER)
BLACK MARKET LIQOUR . (late 1950’s, Early 60’s))
BLACK MARKET DRUGS MEDICINE
ADD WAS OCCUPATION A SUCCESS BLURB (J. Survive Occupation)(Blakemore)
LANSCO(Con’t
(GINZA MACHII)(TOSEI-KAI) (GINZA MACHII (1945-160=)
(GINZA MACHII)
(YOKOTA GANG & TSK) (1958)
(YOKOTA-TANASHI DETAILS (from Tape 13 12 &13 combine)
GINZA MACHII
GINZA MACHII (1989)
(PIMPING: HOTEL NEW YORK)
(GINZA MACHII & NICK)
MACHII (1989)
(ROPPONGI)
(MISCELLANEOUS: PRO-WRESTLING FIX)
(RIKIDOZAN CHARACTER)
ADD KIMURA LETTER DECEPTION SHOWING DEVIOUS RIKI CHARACTER
(FAMILY LIFE FIRST MARRIAGE)
(POST YOSHIKO LIFE ..ABANDONED TURKISH BATH)
(JOE DIBELLO)
(CLUB 88)
(EARLY YEARS IN JAPAN, WIVES AND LOVERS)
MISCELLANEOUS (DEPORTATION & RETURN)
CUT MATRIAL (Freddy, Machii, Tanashi, Japanese Gangsters Fighting Spirit, Miscellaneous, Yakuza, TSK Gangsters, Trade Trump
(OMURA)(Addendum) (Foreign Exchange) Acquiring yen, girls refuse dollars))
But sex was a great part of my life. I couldn’t help it. Because when I came to Japan, you know, you stay without sex in the Marine Corps for 4 years, shit, man, the first thing we did in Kyushu was go to the whorehouses there. 10 yen to stay all night. Imagine that? Price has gone up recently. But then I told you, the girls in Omura woulnd’t take yen we found out it, only Japanese money. We didn’t have any so we had to go get some to get laid. So I sent some guys back to Okinawa. There was plenty of Japanese money all over the streets of Okinawa. It was useless currency.
The Japanese currency was in Okinawa. And I was the first sergeant, so I sent an airplane down there with a couple of boys to get all you can and they brought back a locker full of money and we just distributed it. Gave everybody that time, 3,000 yen each. And when you think that if a Japanese made 10 yen a month, he was doing good. We gave everybody 3,000 yen. Boy, you talk about wild niggers. I should just say wild sailors. Being that you don’t want to use the word nigger.
Q: Black guys you mean?
A; No, I mean you know, cowboy Roebuck…how would you say it.? They were allowed 3,000 yen. Jesus. 10 yen you could stay all night. Can you imagine what 3,000 yen can do? Jesus, you can live there for ever.
Q: Why was there money on the street. I don’t understand this. This money lying on the street?
A: Yeah. Cuz it was no good. They lost the war.
Q: And they started using American currency. MPC.
A: Well, I mean you couldn’t buy anything. And the money between them was no good.. What could they buy with it? And you go over to one of them and you say, you know, “Here’s a dollar. How much Japanese yen you got?” Fuck, they give you a baleful. They’ll give you all they got. What the hell do they care about it? It’s no good. It has no purchasing power.
(RED LIGHT YOSHIWARA & OTHER OCCUPATION TALES)
And you know, back in the old days they had Yoshiwara (red light district in e. Tokyo) And they used to have stripes on the building for PFC’s. And this one was for Corporal. And this one has 3 stripes. And this one was a lieutenant’s place. Imagine that, the girls were taught that different classes of people would sleep with different girls. …Yoshiwara….Stripes & Bars. If your stripes matched the door, you get in. The sergeant couldn’t go in the corporal’s place. And the corporal couldn’t’ screw a girl in the sergeant’s place.
Then they had another whorehouse in Tokyo. Shinjuku 2-chome was at.
Q: Tell me about that.
A: Well, Shinjuku was over here (i.e. western Tokyo) . Of course, they wiped it out now. That’s where the Shinjuku-ku Kuyakusho (ward office) is. That used to be 2-chome. It was all fucking red light neighborhood. But then again most of Japan was that way. The old days.
I remember I used to buy yakitori from a man on a push cart. And that was back in 1946. And I used to go by the Nomura Hotel, next door to the Dai-Ichi hotel, and this guy was there with his wagon and his monkey. And he made good yakitori. And, of course, we were very liberal with money. Because, what the hell are you going to do with money? You got plenty of money. Nobody else had money. And today…that guy went down to the Ginza and he opened a place, and it was the most expensive yakitori you ever ate and you couldn’t get a seat. Years and years ago, like 10-15 years ago, you sit there with two people and your bill was 10,000 yen. Where normal people were spending 500
yen to eat. That bill would be 10,000 yen. Cost ten times more than any other place. And you couldn’t get a seat. It’s still there…It’s down on the Ginza …in an alley…near Meito cheese co. …by a pharmacy…very very good yakitori, because it’s got all the dishes in front of you. And you say give me this, give me that. Give me this. Give me that. And I love to eat Yakitori. By now if my wife hears about chicken, she says “Don’t eat there. Cuz Chicken’s got a high fat content in the skin.” But he was a very famous man. Course he’s dead now. But his yakitori place still carries his picture and his pushcart picture. And the monkey. He always carried a monkey….I had a monkey but I called her Michiko.
Q: Tell me about the whorehouses in Yoshiwara. Give me some color,.
A: Well, it’s very hard…it’s way back in the memory. You know it looked like a GI barracks. 2 floors. Big buildings. You know barracks. And I don’t think you paid more than 10 yen or 20 yen or some crap like that. Then money was so insignificant.
Q: This is when? Late 40’s?
A: 1946. 47. In Tokyo. Yoshiwara.
Q: And what, they have beds or what? Tatami?
A: No, they had…I’d say they were all tatamis. And futon’s. And they were not really separated rooms. Just curtains. You know, it was a flimsy operation. Who cared. You just went in, took your clothes off and fucked and got up and left. Then you had to run right back and wash yourself carefully and all that other crap. There was no washing facilities. There was no Ofuro. (bath) Anyway, who in the hell would go in an ofuro in a place like that? Probably got every disease in the world. Of course, I can not say that I never got a needle stuck in my ass. That was a quite often occurrence in this country. But then, again, like the doctor said, “It’s better to get a dose than to not do it at all.”
Q: You got it?
A: Yeah. Oh sure.
Q: What did doctor give you?
A: A shot of penicillin. In the ass. And it will go away. But like Dr Aksenoff, my doctor said, “It’s better to take a needle than not do it.” And I think he’s correct.
Q: What were these places like in the winter?
A: Cold. But then, you know, they ain’t that bad. I mean those places they have their little hibachis, but you can’t keep a barracks warm. The only way you can keep it slightly warm is with human bodies. But they were big buildings. They were big barracks. So they might have had in one place, they might have had a 100 girls. One floor.
Q: how do…they bring one in, you pick the one you wanted?
A: You didn’t care. You didn’t care. One is as good as the other. The mama-san would say, “You go to Room No. 7.” and they got No. 7 on the god damn sheet that’s hanging up there. And you go in there. There were no bedrooms. No walls. No partition. Just open. They might have got high class later on, but to me, it was just the next military barracks, that was flooded with broads.
Q: No partition. No walls. Just futon. Hibachi. And these girls were wearing kimono?
A: The bottom one. What do you call it, underneath the kimono.They have a word for it. What is that word? You know, they call it a little housecoat, a kimono. That’s where we get the word kimono from. You know the navy says skivvy shirts.That’s an Oriental word. But you got to get a bigger authority on that than me. I was spoiled. I was catching girls everywhere. I went to Yoshiwara once or twice. But after that, it was not necessary. Not necessary. They had too many girls in Tokyo.
(POSTWAR GI BEHAVIOR)
Q: Sorry to keep switching back and forth, but in those days, the late 40’s and 50’s. did the GI’s really beat up on the Japanese? Was there a lot of that bullying shit going on that you saw? Was there a lot of nastiness and meanness.
A: The American military man when he came to Japan, he was not nasty, because first of all his background was a poor boy from the farm. It was not somebody that you displaced where you have like today’s kids…How many of you kids got a car? Everybody raises their hand. How many of you kids fuck everyday? Everybody raise their hand….In those days they didn’t have that kind of shit.
So when the American military man came to Japan, he was a humble type. He was not anti-Japanese. Unless, of course, if the Japanese got out of line, the American will knock the shit out of him. You gotta remember, the Japanese weighs 120 pounds. What kind of shit can he give somebody? They didn’t have no Ginza Machii’s who was 6 foot tall. So I’d say the American was a very polite…he enjoyed being in Japan, because back home, he had nothing. Like in my house, we come from fucking home relief. Can’t pay the rent. You know. Eat spaghetti everyday if you’re lucky. So when you come to Japan, you got a salary, you got a place to sleep. You don’t go outside and become mean. I don’t think I ever had any trouble with the Japanese, all…of course, I did have trouble in Yokosuka. Other than that, I never had trouble with Japanese……no, they didn’t give me any shit. They knew their place. They knew they lost the war and they also knew that they couldn’t take an …you know like today, the Japanese is very arrogant. He thinks he knows karate and he knows judo. Ne. Shit. Every marine knows judo. You learn that in the Marine Corps. You don’t go after it like a Japanese would. Then most Americans, like me, weighed close to 200 pounds. Who’s gonna fuck around with you. 4 years in the Marine Corps, you learn to be nasty. And when you come from New York, it’s worse.
Q: But you know in Japanese movies and novels, the GI is always portrayed as raping Japanese girls and beating up on the guys,
A: Well, that ‘s to make a movie work. But you didn’t have to rape the girls. You know I haven’t found a woman yet who says “I don’t like sex.” If you approach her properly and you are polite, and you give them something, you know you can’t say “Fuck Free.” You give them a handkerchief. At least you gave them something. You show a clean intent. What you see on the screen and the Japanese, GI’s and this, that…that’s all fucking anti-American propaganda….Like that stupid “Rain Man” is that the movie?…”BLACK RAIN.” That’s the biggest joke you’ve ever seen. Michael J. Fox.
Do you know Michael J. Fox is 5’3” or something like that. (confused with Michael Douglas)
Q: Ishihara Shintaro tells story about walking down Zushi street, 14 years-old, comes on two GI’s coming toward him, not enough room, all three refuse to get out of the way. GI’s eating ice cream cone. Wouldn’t move.
A: Ishihara wouldn’t move?
Q: Yeah. He thought why should I move, they’re ones hogging the streets.
A: And one of the GI’s put the ice cream right in his fucking face.
Q:Yeah.
A: You better believe it. Of course, now, that would happen. I used to live in Katsura, in Zushi, on the beach. I used to live there during 1946, 45.47. Of course, the Americans were nice people, but if you stood up in front of them and showed defiance, you’re gonna get hurt. I don ‘t care who the American is….I can only that is Shintaro said to them “One of these days I’m gonna write a book, The Japan That Can’t Say No, those 2 GI’s with the ice cream would have broke both his fucking hands and fingers and everything. He’ll never be able to write a book….But no GI is gonna hit a 13 year old kid. Shit….and Zushi is not that small where two people can’t walk on the same street.
(INSERT REVERSE COURSE BLURB)
A: When they are on top of you they say and do anything they want. Bastards.
(YOKOSUKA FIGHT)
Q: What was the problem you had in Yokosuka one time?
A: Well, I was walking with my wife and 6 or 7 Japanese…it was night time, and they used the word pansuke ,,,(whore). Of course, like I said, even my case, if you act against me, I’m gonna fight. So it didn’t take me but a few seconds to get rid of 7 Japanese. Shit. I went through them like a fucking hot knife through butter.
(phone call from Yae)
Q:The Yokosuka fight when the guy called your wife a pansuke (whore). Was that daytime or nighttime?
A: Nighttime. Walking down the street in Yokosuka, 1945.
Q: Where. The bar section?
A: No. Just walking down the street.
Q: What did the street look like?
A: Oh, you know…I think at that time we were trying to get to the train station. Cuz she was a doctor as Tawara….(gives wrong directions to Tawara)…I think Tawara is past Zushi. So we were walking down the street These stupid bastards called her a pansuke.
Q: What’d they look like?
A: Just young kids. 20 years old. 21.
Q: How were they dressed? What were they wearing?
A: In those days they wore nondescript clothes. They were all filthy pigs. They had no clothes. I mean, today the kids are dressed. Today the women got lipstick and makeup. And they own soap and they take baths (pron. “bats”) Those days, you know, life was tough. If you had an income of 100 yen a day, you had big money, yo. I think the first time was what, 15-1? 15 yen to a dollar. Then it went to 50. Then it went to 270, then 360 (1949-1972), like that. I told you what a ni-go-yon (2-5-4) is….That’s how much they got in one day. 254 yen. They used to stand on the corner, try to get a job, the guy would come with a truck, he’s gonna take 20 laborers. And 20 guys get picked. They get in the truck, go someplace and pick up rubble or something. So they were called ni-go-yon.
Cuz that was their salary for 8 hours labor.
Q: And so these guys called you pansukeand you just…
A: They walked right by me. They said “pansuke” see. So I turned around and went after them. They never thought that this, of course, I was a Marine. No, I wasn’t a Marine, I was a civilian. But I was wearing Marine clothes cuz it’s all the clothes you have.
Q: So what’d you do?
A: I just hit them. Knocked them all out. Didn’t take long.
Q: You picked one and hit him in the face?
A: I hit them two at a time. Lefthand, righthand, lefthand, righthand. That was the end. Then the MP’s came and said, “You crazy?” You know. Fuck that shit. But you gotta remember I was 26 years old. I weighed a good 200 pounds. Maybe 190. 180.
Q: So you were crazy then. I mean you were in a very excited state of mind then.
A: We hated the Japanese. Any fucking excuse to hit them. Any excuse. Still today you know. Of course, today’s GI is not the same as when I went through. Different world.
Q: How’s it different. Oh, you told me that,
A: We were brought up different. We were brought up without food, without money, without clothes. And, you know, take you away from your momma. And they attacked Pearl Harbor. All that propaganda.
A: But you see in those days even in my case, one against seven, it’s not a problem.
Q: These are young guys.
A: Young punks. They think there’s safety in numbers, cuz Yokosuka is navy area. They all think that way. Picked on the wrong guy. My wife thinks I’m very mean that I did that. She says, “so what, they said that.” I said, “ bullshit.” But that’s the Japanese way too, to forgive and forget. They grab. They do all the damage they want. Then they want you to forgive and forget. Then they go out again and do it again. It’s worse than the rotating door in the American prisons.
(CPC INVESTIGATIONS) (KING OF KOREA) (SEX)
(INS. From Tape 8)
(KING OF KOREA)
A: I tell you I took the King of Korea on a whorehouse trip with me….He was married to the Emperor’s sister…Prince Rhee…or Lee…He was a shortish guy. He looked like Colonel Sanders. That would be a good description of him. Like Kentucky Fried Chicken. Little heavy, squat. That’s why if you put a white suit on Prince Rhee, he’d look like Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel Sanders. Of course, in those days, Colonel Sanders wasn’t born yet. Prince Rhee was a dapper dan. Well, dressed. Polite. Well mannered. Perfect English. Cigar smoker. Of course, when he smoked a cigar, the cigar looked like it was ten times bigger than him. Cuz I imagine he was about 5’3”. Maybe 5’4”…..
I took him to my girl friend’s house. I believe was Shimo-Tokaido. She was the greatest blow artist in town. And she was studying to be a lawyer. Good looking girl. Smart. Intelligent. She loved to suck. And who am I to discourage any such activity? As long as you got tits baby, you’re welcome.
A: The King was married to the emperor’s sister. Emperor Hirohito. The present Emperor’s aunt. That was to cement bonds between Korea and Japan. And he lived today in an imperial family building that is today the Akasaka Prince Hotel, a big skyscraper hotel that they built around it. That was his property. That used to be his private home. And I used to go there quite often. …And he used to raise flowers. Roses. Where the hotel swimming pool is now, that was his garden. The whole thing, that was his private home. I used to sleep there. Drink with him. Eat with him. Too bad we didn’t know about real estate in those days. That property must be worth a fortune.
The king If we say 46, that was about 40 years ago. Let’s say I was 40 years old. Which would be wrong. That would be 1950. Let’s see. I was …1946,,47. And he was already gray-haired. Oh, he was gray-headed at that time.And I’d say at that time he was already 50-60 years old. And that would be about 40 years ago. So today, if he was alive, he’d be 100 yrs old….but that’s easy to find out.. And he was a little smaller than Kentucky Fried Chicken. Same type. White hair. White suit. Little smaller than Colonel Sanders
But I got to know him,. I was a government investigator. I was allowed to do anything I wanted.. I got a license to steal. I used to investigate. That’s when I was an investigator. I don’t know. We had 30-40 investigators. And everybody’s all over the countryside doing things. A: I didn’t investigate him.So the way I think I met him is he came with one of our boys to the dance hall in the Sumida River. Cuz those guys we were the only guys who had liquor, beer…He was cute. It’s not often you’re sitting at the same table with a king.
We used to go around. And we had a lot of friends. And associates. And of course Americans are not snobs. It isn’t a question of “I know the king. I don’t wanna introduce you.” He was a Korean.
But then you see I did investigate the Imperial Family when I went over to see that Prince Higashikuni…He was briefly in charge of the country after the war. . He was the guy who took over Japan after the 1945 August 15. Until they replaced him probably with Yoshida. Shigematsu. I forgot who took his place.
He brought a Cadillac out of the Philippines. And his name came on the list that he had a Cadillac. And my job was to go ask the questions about the Cadillac.
I was a property investigator so I had to ask him where’d you get the Cadillac. He got it from the Philippines, of course. I says We know that. What’d you pay for it? And it answer was like $10,000. Then the next question which I didn’t want to ask is…What kind of $10,000. US dollars or printed Japanese Occupation money. Of course, it was printed pesos. He prints them. Why not spend them. Occupation money. Uncle Sam used to print it too, you know. All the countries print their own money. So down in the Philippines, they had Japanese pesos. Just like the Americans had MPC’s in Tokyo. So what the hell.
Q: Did you ask him that question?
A: Of course, not. I know he’d fail that question. Then you got to confiscate the car, for what, for who. You wind up costing the American government more money than the car is worth. Now you got to warehouse it. You got to search out the real owners. You got to return the car to them and they’ll probably say ship it back to the Philippines. You know.
Well, they know. See they’re up there. They know that you can’t hurt them. You know because you can’t hurt them. Because, you can’t hurt them. A fucking prince. Are you crazy? You’re supposed to use, shall we say, discretion? But you can’t let him know that, you know.
Prince Higashikuni, Oh, he was just a suave character. Well dressed, you know. Strictly prince type. A couple of grades higher than a business man. But of course all those guys speak English and they’re polite and diplomatic. They also know you’re looking down their throat.
Q: You went to the Imperial Palace?
A: Yeah… What was the room like where you met him?
A: Well, they have outhouses. I guess you’d call ‘em that. You don’t go into…You know you never get into the main structures. And, of course, it was guarded more than it is today.
But I met the King of Korea.
And we hit it off. But I used to go there.& we’d go out drinking. He was a gay blade. He enjoyed life. And he loved to dance this guy. He liked American style dancing. He thought it was great. We used to go to Ningyo-cho. What the hell was the name of that club. That was a little dance hall there. Away from the Ginza. . Ningyo-cho. It’s on the Sumida River. Of course, it’s probably gone now. They gone mansions on the river. But it was a big dance hall.
Other places to pick up girls. God only knows what he told his wife. He had to go down for questioning or some shit like that
. I forget the name we gave him. His name was Prince Rhee. But we never said that. We never said Rhee. Because somebody might hit a bell with somebody. And he had another name So we gave him the name “George or Frank or Johnny or some shit like that. I can’t remember.
A: Well, you got to remember. This guy is a prince. And he is protected all the time. And everybody’s around him and he doesn’t get a chance to be free
Q: Did you ever take that Korean King to Yoshiwara?
A: No, no. Those days Yoshiwara was practically gone. No, we had private sex. Plenty of girls. We used to go to “Oasis” to pick up girls. Too bad we didn’t know about real estate in those days. That property must be worth a fortune. Too bad we didn’t know about real estate in those days. That property must be worth a fortune.That was at the bottom of the Matsuya Department Store….It was a dance hall. Probably had Hiroshi Watanabe and Chiemi Eri singing for Christ’s sake. Although that was before her days. Watanabe used to play at the Dai=Ichi Hotel….Band leader. Chieri Emi …that was her first singing gig. Dai-Ichi Hotel used to be an officer’s billet. In Shimbashi. Q: Inside?
A: Ballroom. Chandeliers. Those lights that go around. They had one called the Oasis on the Ginza, which probably now is Matsuzaka. The department store. Matsuya. That was in the basement…. But he was young, cuz I got him fixed up with broads. He must have been young. He never turned down sex.
I got him sucked one day… He told me he had never had a blow job before. Can you imagine that? What’s the point of being the King of Korea if you never get a blow job. So I took him to this lawyer I knew..or a girl who was studying to be a lawyer, and she used to blow guys in her house in Shimo Takaido.
: She gave him a blow job. Yeah. He liked that. He thought it was great.
This girl wasn’t a whoor exactly. No…she was from the upper class. She had a very big home. Her mother & father was there and whatnot. But you know that way the Japanese homes are. You got the garden and you got the sliding doors. So she’d always make sure that the door was ….a little knock. She knows what it was. She was great. She was a good-looking girl, too. She was great. But she wouldn ‘t fuck though. She only wanted to blow, blow, blow. She never stopped.
But, like I told you. Those days. You knew the girl that blew. You knew the one that wanted to go back style. You knew the one that wanted to be on top. You knew all the different kinds. In all my life in Japan, I always enjoyed sex with a broad because they all had their own perfection. This is what they liked to do and what they liked to do they do best yo. Why argue with it?
But anyway, those were the days of sex galore. All the sex you wanted. No problem. But, you had to be a gentleman. You had to be nice. You had to be friendly. You had to be sociable. You couldn’t say I’m a sergeant or I’m a lieutenant or I’m a colonel. You couldn’t do none of those things. They would turn against you. You had to appeal to them on an equal level. Treat them as human beings. You’d be surprised. Many refused to take gifts. Even though they were hurt and hungry. A lot of them had a lot of pride. Then how can they take home something, their mother and father say “Where’d you get that from?” See. And you couldn’t give them MPC’s because they couldn’t do nothing with it. And yen was not an item that we dealt with so much.
But there was so many girls. You didn’t have to walk more than 5 feet and you got one. And I guess today it’s the same thing. Except of course they’re more sophisticated today. They’re a little bit more different. Today, sex starts high school or less than high school. In those days, sex was a limited playtime. Japanese men didn’t qualify. The girl wanted something and they had no money. But the foreigner had plenty of money. Especially this foreigner here. I had so much money, made so much money, now I’m poor and my wife is very rich. I wonder how that happened.
Somebody turned the air conditioner on.
A: Want something to eat. …Ne…(calls water)…Ne…
Q: Pizza’s fine. Your pizza is really good here….
A: Ne…(claps)…What’s good here is the fact that nobody answers you. You get no feedback. You get no nothing….Matsubayashi!…Ne….Hey, you’re supposed to start work at 3 o’clock. Where the fuck are you?…(checks new audio watch) (time 4:53)
(Eating pizza. Smalltalk. Baseball in Japan. . Kuwata, Giants pitcher, took money under table, from sporting goods company. Etc. etc. blah.blah…. Story about Cromartie.
: You know now, life is such a funny situation. I take the train. I go to Kami-Kitazawa. & I can swear she lived in Shimo-Tokaido. I go through that station every fucking day. And I can swear she lived in Shimo-Tokaido, and I go through that station everyfucking day now. & I’m thinking now, I wonder where that house is. I wonder what her name was. But then who wants to meet her today. She’s 60 years old. 65 years old. Get out of here. I don’t wanna meet no 65 year old broad. But it would be fun.
Did you see the Korean girl that won the Japanese singing contest the other day? Jesus Christ. I’d give up my right arm to be young again. She was 16 years old. She was the most beautiful fucking girl I’ve ever seen.
.
(Bad cough.)
A: Jesus Christ. I’m gonna die.
Q: What’s this cough all about.
A: I got it over here and I can’t get rid of it. I got it for 3 months. It’s just one step away from pneumonia. And I eat all kinds of fucking cough drop medicine….(unintelligble)
(Takes cough drop. Discussion of cough drops)
Q: Did he feel discriminated against? I know that’s a funny word to use in this situation.
A: In those days there was no discrimination against Koreans. As a matter of fact, Koreans had a better position than the Japanese. Koreans are sort of allies.
Q: I mean the Japanese discriminated against the Koreans. But the Koreans had more power, they were in a better position at that time.
A: At that time they were stronger than the Japanese. Because they had that tremendous hatred. And, of course, you gotta remember, the American GI wasn’t exactly in love with the Japanese. They may have enjoyed screwing their broads, but it didn’t go much further than that. Of course, today, social standards are a little different. You meet a girl, you like her. Ah, look at your own wife. She’s not a peasant. She’s got an education. She speaks English. She’s got a job. She’s got money. She’s got clothing. Back in 45, 46, 47, 48. They didn’t have none of that crap.
Q: What did the King think of his position in the Imperial Household. Did he ever complain about it?
A: In those days, there was no conversation in that direction. Today, you know about the Imperial thing, and all that shit, but in those days, we didn’t,…nobody paid attention. It wasn’t such an important place. And, of course, MacArthur downgraded the Emperor. Leave him alone. He’s nobody. And, of course, the Emperor laid low. No statements. You know you hide like a thief. Same things insane Hussein did. Sadaam Hussein, is that what they call him? He stayed low when January 15th came. Now he’s out of the sack again and he’s making people pay.
(NARCOTICS)
Q: Was there a lot of hard drugs back in the immediate postwar era or the 50’s
A: Before I opened my restaurant, there was this friend of mine, his name was William Kayes. He’s probably dead by now, but anyway, Frank Nomura was a little bit close to that. We used to go to a coffee shop on then Ginza. Something like a coffee shop or a half-assed coffee shop and a bar…And I remember the medical doctor from the U.S. Army hospital would come over and give him benzedrine shots. But he was not a eater. He was strictly a drinker..And I think that the doctor might have been making a little money on the side.. But I think he was charging 50 yen a shot, which wasn’t much money in those days. But there was no stampede or anything like that. To me, I’d say. What’s you’re talking about. I doubt that there was even more than 10 people in the whole city who even thought about it. It was out of my knowledge. I know they were fooling around with benzedrine shots.
Q: I thought all the workers were those, the benzedrine. There was a big problem. In fact the government had to establish a policy towards that.,
A: It’s possible, but like I say it’s not in my realm of things if that’s the way you say it. Why? Why would they take it? They’re tired and all this and all that. Basically they’re tired. To give them energy. That’s what benzedrine does. But I think you might equate that with the fact that it’s very very hard to get a job. Day laborers….Possibly, they had to go there and look like they were hustle and bustle and maybe they took the shots just to impress the foreman who’s gonna hire them. So it might be a certain segment of the population that’s doing that. Day laborers. And people that get a one day job. Construction. Or anything. But the society in Japan is generally not drug related. In all my years here, in all my drinking and playing around, I never seen a drug. I know my friend Kenny Pearce used to take uppers….I took one one day. And fuck I went in the police station and I was looking to fight with the police. When that son-of-a bitch wore off I had to question myself “you gotta be crazy to do that.”
Q: Tell me about that. Going to the police station.
A: I was looking for trouble. With the Azabu police station. I tell you.
Q: When was this?
A: 1960.
Q: When did this guy William Kayes get his shots?
A: Probably 1950. I was already out of the military in 1950, so it had to be after that. It was my free days between 1950 and 1956.
Q: The doctor came over and gave him a shot in the coffee shop?
A: Well, he used to go behind a curtain. But, it was right there. And of course, the guy was still in a military uniform. Bill was civilian clothes. He was just another loser. …It must have been very close to 1956. Cuz when I opened my restaurant, I used to feed him free. So would be 55, 54, 56.57.
Q: What about other drugs? Grass?
A: Naw, to me, like I told you, I was not involved in those things. Kenny would take something, I know. Course, he’d hide it. But he never ate. He never drank whiskey. He was an American Indian from Hood River Oregon. And then he was some sort of an entertainer. He was a comedian. He worked the military circuit. Telling jokes. He worked at Club 88 telling jokes. He was a very funny guy. So I guess in his trade, they were used to that kind of stuff.
This fucking place is cold.
Q: But in that whole period from 46 to the…let’s say they got their act together by the late 50’s…Japan by then was fairly well organized. They were poor and all that. The real rough and tumble years were 46 to the mid-50’s.
A: Well yes. I’d say the rough years were 1946 to 1952 when Japan signed the peace treaty. I worked in the military until 1950. So I’d say I opened my restaurant in 1956, so 1955, I got arrested in 1956. January. So, to me they were very rough years up until 1956.
Q: Economically
A: Economically, for everybody. There was no such thing as money. A thousand yen, you were a rich man. Because I remember when I got in trouble in 1956, when this friend of mine stole the Imperial Hotel Diamonds, I asked for $500 from the States. And My father sent me $500. And I think that was 180,000 yen or something.like that. 360 to 1 right? And that was a tremendous amount of money. 180,000 yen in those days was monster money. And the police didn’t believe me. And I told you I did it another time. I did it 2 or 3 times. And finally they sez “Ah, this guy’s got too much money to be a thief.” But then I guess all thieves are rich. That’s why they’re thieves.
But when I opened my first restaurant, I think salaries were like 2,000 yen a month, or 3,000 yen, at the most. Probably 2,000 a month.
Q: So this Army doctor was giving shots on the side, then.
A: Yeah.
Q: Was Kayes out of the army then.
A: Oh, yeah. Shall we say “free enterprisers.” But Kayes was not a businessman. He was not in my category. I would think about how to make money. And I had no scruples how I made money.I have to live. I had a wife and 2 kids and I had a mistress. I had to support myself and three or four other people. And this guy I just spoke to in Moscow, he used to work for me. He was 18 years old. He was a Russian.
And this guy, his name is Baborov as you heard. And we had another one, Leo Yuskoff. And another one, George Trentioff. And these 3 White Russians, they didn’t have citizenship. They were allowed to do anything they wanted, break any law, and the Russian Embassy would protect them. But they were not allowed to get caught for illegal parking. Shall we say social crimes. Economic crimes. They could do anything they wanted economically. So we used to sell dollars and black market canned goods. You name it. All that kind of shit. So this kid..
Q: What’d you sell?
A: Anything. Anything. Anything we could get our hands on.
Q: Any drugs at all.
A: No drugs. We never dealt in drugs.
Q: Any medication at all. Pharmaceutical?
A: Nothing. Nothing like that. Now I know one prick. William Cheney who lives in Birmingham Alabama today. You can write his name. Why that son of a bitch. Wallace Cheney. Warren Cheney. Wallace Cheney something like that. Now this guy was in the MP’s at Tachikawa and he used to steal penicillin. You know the liquid. And he used to siphon out some of the penicillin and put water in it. And make like 3 bottles out of one.And he used to peddle it.
To me that was unscrupulous.Terrible son of a bitching thing.
Q: What do you call those things? Bottles? Tubes?
A: No they’re bottles. Little bottles with a rubber cap. And they can stick the needle in through the cap and draw it out. But I know he used to sell them….But you know in those days, everybody had a little deal that they were doing. And generally, they would never tell you what they were doing. /Cuz then you’d do what they’re doing. So they don’t want to invite competitions…so they had little gimmicks. So this guy’s forte was penicillin.
That other doctor was selling fucking “Hiropon” …they called it Hiropon (Philopon).
Nick: Anata, hiropon wakaru? (You know what hiropon is?)
Waiter: Hiropon wakarimasu. (I know Hiropon)
Nick: Itsu hajimete no…hiropon. (When did hiropon start?)
Waiter: Ah, boku wakaran. (I don’t know)
Nick: Kore wa yaku (it’s a drug)
Waiter: So.(yes)
Nick: Daitai ippatsu, ikura. (About how much was one hit)
Waiter: (laughing) Sore wa wakaranai. (I don’t know that.)
See. It was that big, he knew about it.
So the problem was here. But Hiropon is what …You know what Hiropon is?
Q: No.
A: It’s a drug. It could be the Japanese word for benezedrine. (philopon—a kind of metha amphetamine)
He’s not so old. You gotta get a guy about 50 or 55 and ask him what hiropon is. But I know that this is probably benzedrine. But like I told you when I decided I was going to commit suicide, you could just go to the store and buy fucking anything you want.
Q: You could buy hiropon?
A: I don’t know if you could buy hiropon (yes, you could until 1949) I imagine you probably could. Cuz I bought sleeping pills. Forgot the name of the sleeping pills. But like I said, it’s an element of people that I was not affiliated with.
Q: Back then, did you know what coacaine was? And heroin?
A: No. No there was none…you might call that a hard drug. There was no such thing here. I don’t think…I don’t think marijuana or opium or cocaine, now I know…you can mention the guy’s name because he’s dead now, Scotty De La Roche. He used to be King Kong in the entertainment world. He’d wear a gorilla uniform. And I know he told me that he would take this black paste in the gorilla uniform and take it to Tokyo. But that black paste is cocaine. But he brought it up from S.E. Asia somewhere, but …because, cocaine, to us it’s white, right?…But he says black paste. I’m under the impression that he was bringing in cocaine. But what they called it at that time. That’s a long time ago. 15-20 years ago. So there must have been a market. But it must have been a very, very quiet market. There was no police percussion. There was nobody getting in trouble in the streets or anything like that. So it was a very, shall we say, it might have been in society, but it was extremely low key. Because in all my days…we served 20,000 people a month in this restaurant, you know my 5 restaurants, in those days I imagine I probably did more. But we never had any incident where somebody was under the influence of drugs. And my place was the in place. You had to go to my place if you were anybody..
(BLACK MARKET BEER)
I used to black market beer. I got court martialed for that.
Q: You told me that story. Where’d you get the beer…from the base?
A: You get the tickets to buy beer from the PX. And you take it to the beer warehouse, and you take it to the beer factory and you give’em the tickets and you…cuz the tickets are already paid for. And they loaded your vehicle or your truck or whatever you wanted with…we used to do it in truckloads.
In those days when I was in the military, they’d give you 20 bottles of liquor for 20 dollars. It was assorted liquours. You’d get a liquer. You’d get scotch. You’d get wine. You get everything. And I tell you we used to throw it into the (garbed) can…the whole 20 bottles and get a big chunk of ice, and that was our drinking. Boy, that used to knock you on your butt.
Q: What kind of profit could you make on beer? Double the price?
A: Ah, no. You made a lot of money on beer. I think beer was 160 yen a bottle. About 40 cents. And I imagine we bought it very cheap. But you see, the Japanese, beer was a good business, because they don’t drink water. Water in those days was not pure. So everybody who wanted something to drink, they drank beer. And because water was no good, you got the same problem, nobody drinks “mizuwari” (whiskey water). Unless at home you got a bottle and you boil the water.
Q: How about whiskey? Selling that on the black market?
A; The Japanese were rotgut drinkers. They were not…there was no high class shit in Japan. They couldn’t afford Johnny Walker. They couldn’t afford even crap liquour. They had what they called .45. Which was rotgut. I mean all the refinement that you see about the Japanese today, hey, he acquired that after the 1950’s. After the 1960’s. Before that, he was just an ordinary bum.
BLACK MARKET LIQOUR . (late 1950’s, Early 60’s))
Q: What about later, with your restaurant?
A: Well, there was always that business. Whiskey was a very good business. You get it from the military.
Like in my particular position, (in the 50’s after I got my restaurant) we used to buy black market whiskey, we used to buy Chianti black market, we used to buy all this crap on the black market because you couldn’t get it legally. The Japanese wouldn’t let it come in. So you go and you take a bottle of Johnny Walker, whichever, any name you want, and it had the stamp on it that it had been imported, you’ve seen these stamps, even today they’ve got them, then you use the bottle, you finish it, then you go get another one from the military and you fill it up again. And you’re serving legitimate Canadian Club or V.O. or whatever you want to call it, but the bottle that it comes in, you have to throw it away, because that bottle don’t have a stamp. And when the tax man comes in, he goes behind the bar and he starts looking at all these bottles to see if they got stamps on them.
Then he’d say to you, “This bottle here has been a long, long time. Look how old it is.” You know. And of course, you can’t say I filled it up 20 times. Like in my case I say “We’re in the restaurant business. We sell pizza and beer. We don’t sell much whiskey. That’s why the bottle is old.”
BLACK MARKET DRUGS MEDICINE
Q: What about antibiotics in those days. You could buy them over the counter in Japan. At a drugstore?
A:No, I doubt it. I think even doctors would have a hard job buying penicillin, or what’s the other one, begins with a T. Tetracyclin. They were hard to get. That’s what I was saying Cheney was doing. Because if they were easy to get, there would be no black market. But in those days, 1955-56, there was a black market for everything.
Q:They get the antibiotics from the base and sell them.
A: Sure. There was always somebody willing to make a few bucks who had access to the dispensary.
Q: Was there any kind of medicine at all, like you would sell black market, that was expensive, like Contac, stuff like that.
A: No….They only way you get these things is you have to know somebody in the military.
Q: It’s all stuff you can buy over the counter in the military.
A: But you can’t bring that into Japan, see. There was no imports. You couldn ‘t bring it in. The only way you could do anything like that, you’d have to go through the base drugstore and buy it, or the commisary or the px. There was no way you could import anything. They don’t let nothing come in the country. Like I remember I bought a 1946 Ford to Japan which would be 1947 probably, and I don’t how many pounds or how many pounds or tens of pounds I bought those cigarette lighter flints. Because those days lighter flints were hard to come by. And I brought them into Japan and I think I sold them for more money than the car cost. I bought a convertible 46 Ford.
So today the market might be cocaine, but in those days, they were not that affluent that they could buy cocaine to get a high. They were looking to eat. They were looking for medicine to cure themselves of whatever they got. They were not looking for drugs for the sake of enjoyment.
You know, it was not an affluent society.
Today the guy’s got money. He don’t care. He goes out and gets himself a fix or whatever they call that shit, crack and what not. He doesn’t care. $50 or $100. He’s got that money. But in Japan in those days they didn ‘t have no money. If they could buy bread, they were very grateful.
It’s same as if you go to a country like Pakistan and you want to sell the guy a tv. And he says, “What’s that?” You say, “You plug it into electricity.” And you say, “What’s electricity?” Eh?
ADD WAS OCCUPATION A SUCCESS BLURB (J. Survive Occupation)(Blakemore)
LANSCO(Con’t)
Q: What are the other things you sold in your black market operation.
A: Anything and everything. Materials. Canned Goods.
Q: Materials like what?
A: Silks.Woolen materials. Imported London Tweeds. I had a store on the Ginza that was selling all canned goods. If anybody bought the canned goods, I’d get mad because they’d ruin my fucking display on the shelf. You sell the by the cases, you know And that was all military payment certificates. They weren’t allowed to buy with Japanese yen. They were using MPC’s in those days. But I think after 1952, the MPC’s went out of the…Of course, there was always the military, but they used MPC’s. Military Payment Certificates printed by the military. Convertible to dollars. But not convertible back. Or you can buy, with dollars you can buy MPC’s, but you can not buy dollars with MPC’s. It’s a one way street.
Q: What else? Materials. Canned goods.
A: Daily necessities. But you can’t buy, not milk butter or things like that. Just things that can be imported and preserved, properly without refrigeration and w/o freezing, because they didn’t have those facilities here.
Okinawa was a different land. Okinawa was more. You can buy anything in Okinawa. Guys sell you a side of beef. Steal from the commisary. But up here, there was, you couldn’t get that….
(GINZA MACHII)(TOSEI-KAI)
(GINZA MACHII (1945-160=)
Q: What did Ginza Machii look like?
A: Well, Ginza Machii was a young strong man. He was a young strong man. He’s probably about 60 now.6 feet 1’ or 2”. He weighed a good 200 pounds. A big guy, yeah. Course, those days, yes. And I would say he was a nasty guy. And from what I heard, In don’t know how true it is, he used to live near the Sugamo Prison. And, you know where they kept the war criminals. And now it’s a mint, right. Anyway, the last time I was there it was a mint. I used to make coins for my slot machines there. But anyway. I hear the kids in the neighborhood used to call him to fight the MP’s. And that’s I think, the start of his criminal activities. He started out just as a tough guy, pretty soon he had 3 or 4 guys with him, then 10, and then 20…and then pretty soon…They would call him to fight the MP’s. …
Q: Why would they call him to fight the MP’s.
A: Cuz the American MP’s were nasty bastards. Maybe they go in a bar and they make noise and what are you doing with black market whiskey or cigarettes or you know. Those kind of things. They are probably honest law enforcement kids. But they were always with….they don’t go home to their wives, they go home to broads. They human.
Q: What’d you say? They go in the bar and do what
A: They shake down the bar. They can arrest the owner. For having illegal whiskey. & for having illegal cigarettes. And then they always had their fucking Japanese informers, who would tell them that guy is doing this and that guy is doing that. That’s how I got arrested. They had a Japanese informer who squealed on me. But that was his national duty to fuck up the Americans, I guess.
But at the end I came out better.
But pretty soon he had 3 or 4 guys with him, then 10, then 20. And then it got bigger and bigger. He was a Korean, by heritage. South Korea. Koreans in Japan. Came as forced labor before the war, a lot of them, and stayed on. Hundreds and thousands of them. The ones from South Korea sympathized with America, Mao Tse Tung took over in China and the Korean War started.The ones from the North sympathized with the Communists. There was a lot of demonstrating. A lot of riots. Americans were afraid the Socialists were going to take over Japan. So the CIA used Machii’s gang to help put down communist demonstrators. He got to be so important that he went to the 38th paraellel with John Foster Dulles in June 1950, and an ultra nationalist leader named Yoshio Kodama. Those guys were in tight with the higher ups. Machii would get arrested—twice for manslaughter,murder—but he would always get off. Some invisible hand reached down and sprung him. .
Q: How did …yakuza wars & fightsWell, the Roppongi Zoku (Roppongi Tribe), that was over here. What you call today, the Yakuza. They didn’t call them Yakuza in those days. I don’t think they did. But they terrorized Roppongi. They terrorized the Ginza. They terrorized everyplace. Wise guys. With a lot of noise. “Volume.” They go in your place and you ain’t gonna get rid of them unless you play the game or givin’ them something. Then after a while, it becomes a regular collection system. I never had that trouble. Because I was a foreigner. Then can bullshit Japanese, but it’s very hard to fool around with a foreigner, especially if the foreigner was big like me. I’m 220. I don’t give a fuck who the guy is. Or how many they are. It don’t mean shit. But, of course, on the other hand, there’s a lot of Japanese.
But, I told you, that’s that’s how Ginza Machii got big. He just opened a Korean Restaurant and sent his boys out to get customers. The food could have been terrible. They could have got sick. But they paid a high bill. And he became a multi-millionaire. Legitimately. He didn’t need crime. Of course, today’s crime and those days crime is very different. Then, They come up to the guy…let’s say you got a place on the Ginza, you got a bar or something and they go with you and you say “Come on let’s go over to Ginza Machii’s Korean restaurant.” The guy says, “I don’t like Korean food.” He says, “Come on, let’s go.” You say, “Yes.” See.
And he had like 4,000 “policeman” on the Ginza. All little yakuza’s. So it’s very easy for them to bring in two or three hundred customers a day. That’s no trouble. But you see in those days, you couldn’t sell broads. Today the pimp is making money and ….in those days the girls were plentiful. All you had to do is smile and no trouble with a girl. No, of course, the yakuza makes money on whoring. And supply girls to clubs. And all that other crap. But those days, there’s no such thing. There were more girls willing to say yes than guys to ask them.
(GINZA MACHII)
Q: How did you and Ginza Machii become friends? He just started showing up at your restaurant because it was the place to go.
A: It was the place to go. And we both had the same type of background. And then of course I’m a dago from New York and let’s say that …you know, “doctors get along with doctors, and lawyers get along with lawyers. Bad boys get along with bad boys.” And I was not exactly a fucking angel in those days.
…I told you I put Machii in the restaurant business. (More BS?)
I wonder if he appreciates it today.
Q: It gang by the way was 1500, not 4,000 members.
A: Ginza. Just the Ginza police, I heard.
Q: No, Tosei-kai. The whole Tosei-kai in Tokyo never got over 1500.
A: You believe that
Q: Theyr’e a lot of people running around bragging that they are saying they are part of the Tosei-kai. But they really weren’t. But the ones that the police had tabs on, the police records were 1500 as a maximum. Now it’s down to 500. But that type of people like to brag a lot, liked to associate with
…..etc. blah.
A: I remember he had 4,000. But Mogami would know….
Q: But Machii moved right in…Asakusa, after he took Sugamo, after he made his money in the black market. Selling dope, hiropon. Like everybody else. Then moved in on rackets in Asakusa. All territories in TYO divided up just like they were in the States. All these traditional yakuza going back to the Heian Period….He didn’t give a shit. He just moved right in. There were all sorts of wars. After that he went into Ginza. But he had parts of Shibuya. One of the Tosei-kai killed Ando Noboru (no—only knifed—almost killed) in Shibuya.
A: You know more than me.
Q: I’m getting there. All this stuff is written in different books. You get different versions. Which is possibly true, is hard to figure out. But I talked to Abe Joji, who is in Ando Noboru’s group. That’s how he started out. The famous novelist now. I just asked him if he knew Ginza Machii, and boy did his eyes narrow. He says, “Oh, the Korean, eh?”…He knew right away. Then I read in this book that it was one of the Tosei-kai guys that wiped Ando Noboru out. But,…the guy had guts.
A: He was a big man. He was 6’1”.He weighed about 220. He’s a nasty son on a bitch. Boy, you fuck around with him, and you’re in trouble. He didn’t have to call in 6 guys to do his work. But as long as I now Machii, never a bad word between us. Never, never, never.
Q: When you went into your famous pig venture, you bought them from Machii’s big complex in Nassau.
A: No. Futaba.
Q: Who did you become friends with first Riki or Machii?
A: I met Riki first.
Q: You just met him. When did you start becoming friends.
A: Well, see when you open a restaurant, everybody coming to your place.
Q: So they both started coming in about the same time.
A: yeah.
Q: They knew each other before they knew you.
A: They were both Koreans.
Q: Which as big secret in Riki’s case until…you know they created a whole fucking identity for him.
(BS on Riki Bio—real vs. fake)
A: What was his name in Japan?
Q: Momota.
A: But Riki was a hell of a nice guy. But when he drink….that son of a bitch would drink fucking bourbon. He was a tough man.
Q: You know the guy who killed him is still around….
A: Well, Riki killed himself.
Q: …in the hospital..
A: He says, “You can’t kill me with a little hole like that.”
You ought to get close to Machii…His memory is good…You can’t tell no more. It’s like me, boy, I’m getting old., Forget it. I can’t remember who I am.
Q: I think your memory’s pretty good.
A: If you had about 5 or 6 guys around here that came from the same area…and they talk and talk, you get a terrific fucking book….one word will lead into another…..etc…but there’s nobody there.
Q: But the danger of doing that is people start exaggerating what they did.
A:
Q: I think we ought to hang it up today.
I have a lot more questions about different things…
(BS)
(YOKOTA GANG & TSK) (1958)
Machii and his gang helped me out. I’d opened up a branch in Yokota, outside Tokyo, in front of the Yokota Air Force Base. I had some trouble. I called Machii They came up there with Japanese swords and machine guns…oohh, I tell you….They didn’t fuck around. The police run away. They had one killed.
Q: Tell me that again?
A: I’d opened a restaurant in Yokota with a Japanese partner. A joint venture. And I bought the land. And I put the building up. And he was my partner. He would run the day-to-day operations. I don’t know why, I can’t remember the details. And everynight what we sold, we’d send the money in the morning to the bank, but that bastard would take it out in the afternoon. He decided to steal all the previous night’s take, in the afternoon, he went and took the money out. Nice guy. At the end of the first month when I wrote checks to pay my bills, they all bounced.
Q: What was your partner’s name?
A: Jesus. I should say it….Could have been Harada? Did I give it before. Hamada. Anyway, there was some kind of trouble after that. I didn’t tip my hat and walk away.I think he stole 1.2 million of the income.
I got pissed off about it and so they went and called the Tanashi gumi,. Tanashi is little town near Yokota, and the Tanashi gumi is the gang that controls the area.
.I walked into the restaurant, , this guy, he was sitting there. He had on his white suit, white shirt, white tie, real fucking…he saw the Al Capone movie or something like that. White hat? White shoes, probably. Like something out of the Untouchables.,
He just said “we’re taking over your restaurant.”
He was the boss. Crime incorporated took over the restaurant
They just took it over like that. I owned the land. I owned the building. It must have been an argument…
:Q:When they first came in did you give them any backtalk or bullshit or anything?
A: Fuck no. Are you crazy? He’s a got gang a fucking killers. And I got knives and forks and spoons. What are you talking about/
(PM: A: I said, “Pay for it.” Q: So you sold your half? Or what? A: I said give me money. never got any money. Q: He never paid you a cent for that. A: No.Q: Did you give him the paper, hand over the deeds?A: (PMMy wife and I decided…give them the restaurant. And they pay me. And so, I got a million two or some shit like that. And we left the cooks there. And the cooks fucked them all up)
And if I got to run into that kind of people, the only thing I could do was fight fire with fire. I picked up the phone, I called Crime Incorporated, Mr. Machii, I say, “I got trouble here.” And this that and the other thing.
Q: How big was the Tanashi gang?
- I don’t know. Can’t remember. Anyway it was big enough to…so that Machii decided to send quite a few carloads of gangsters back out here.…..
e. So I called Mr. Machii. I got little headache, some trouble. And he sent out his lieutenants. Soldiers. So these two groups met and there was a fight.And it ended… 1 killed. Kid on our side. (ed. No, other side). Tore his guts out with a knife….Got caught down in Fussa, bar, drunk and they got him, they killed him.: (gestures knife) They gave him this kind of shit. His guts was all over the place. My wife knows the story very well. She’s got a better memory than I got. A: I don’t know. There was an argument. Somebody had a knife. And cut his fucking stomach. And, of course, there must have been other people dead. But I only know of one who was was killed…The other side had. … And they had to pay 2.4 million and I got my restaurant.back.
But Machii’s boys would have killed all off them.
(note: Only Tanashi lost a soldier, by knife). (Note: in later tapes. Yae verifies that Tanashi kid got knifed by TSK. That’s only death. Nick paid solatium via TSK. Bought out Yokota partner…+ N. got stolen money back).
And I got my restaurant back.
But this Tanashi group, they cannot fight people like Ginza Machii. Machii has thousands of god damn of you call’em yakuza. He had thousands of members for Christs Sakes. He could have had ten or 15 or 20 thousand members. You don’t play games with those kinds of people.
Tell’em to kill Bob Whiting and they’re gonna put a big sign up and say, “We’re gonna kill Bob Whiting and they’ll march right down to Kamakura. They won’t even take the train. And everybody can see the sign and know where they’re going. And you ain’t about to stop them.
So what happened was they had a meeting. They all met at the Yokota restaurant at after the Tanashi kid got killed. Machi’s boys were here- Tanishi gang. They jammed up my parking lot. Some Tanashi guy came in and parked, blocked the fucking exit, which was right on a highway. I said some things. The little son of a bitch breathed on me. I punched him in the fucking nose. Almost knocked him into to the highway. Cars missed him by an inch Too bad.
TU. P. 95. …At ten the following morning, the following morning, the Tosei-kai chieftain and a dozen short, hollow-cheeked, pasty-faced men in dark, baggy suits entered Yokot Nicola’s, all of them bearing guns or knives of one sort or another and very nsty scowls. They sat down at a large table, facing their opposite number and talked, if that was the word for it. There was a great deal of guttural underworld slang and posturing. Zappetti had no idea what they were talking about. Finally, the Tosei-kai boss put forth an offer in which Mr. Nicola would buy out his partner at a fair price a gave everyone a night to think about it. The next morning the two sides reached and agreement.
XXX
Q: Why did he do that for you? Just because he liked you? Was it out of friendship?
A: We were friends. We palled out together. We drank together. We were buddy-buddies. And remember, you know, those people didn’t know who I really was. I’m an Italian from New York. I can hobnob with those kind of people. They take me in as one of theirs. I only wish they still thought of me like that. I’d get rid of some of the fuckin’ trade deficit.
.Q: Machii just did this to you out of friendship?
(Note: Wife Yae says Nick paid him)
A: Well, Business. It’s his business.
: Ginza Machii made them pay. Oh, yeah, they paid….
(YOKOTA-TANASHI DETAILS (from Tape 13 12 &13 combine)
I got my money back. So I think the settlement figure was they had to pay me 2.4 million. And of course 1.2 was mine and 1.2 went Machii’s group. But those days 1.2 million ws a lot of money. They were getting 4-5,000 yen a month salary. If they were getting that.: He made a profit of 1.2 million yen. 1.2 million was a lot of money. Then we had to pay more money because the kid died. Solatium. And In don’t know now. That’s was a long time ago. 33 years ago (Note: Yae says Nick gave money to the TSK for his part of the solatium). Now, of course, if you went to Machii and you got trouble, I don’t think that they would even think about violence now.
Q: I understand they’re not into that. I know they still run the pachinko stuff and yakiniku (cooked meat) restaurants.
(Yae-Nick: Then I bought my partner out. te: Nick’s former partner in Yokota says, after reading the book in 2001, that it was Nick who brought in gangsters first.)
GINZA MACHII (1960)
(GINZA MACHII)
Q: Did you ever have a heart-to-heart conversation with Ginza Machii? Anything you remember?
A: Well, it’s very hard to…of course, Machii was a very, very good friend of mine. And we would talk, but, you know, you don’t talk politics. You don’t talk about gangsterism. You know. You just talk about let’s go here and have some fun and have some drinks. Strictly 100% socially. You can’t discuss what he does because first of all he is not going to tell you what he does. You just know that he’s that kind of guy, and that’s all.
Q: He thought you were in the mafia right?
A: Well, of course. The bringing up I got automatically makes you think that.
But, of course, I know Mafia people but that doesn’t make you a Mafia. Just like you know ballplayers. But that doesn’t make you a ballplayer. But then they lived on 116th street where I lived.
Q: Well, you knew him well from 56 on to mid 70’s. So you stopped seeing him in the mid-70’s.
A; Late 70’s.
Q: How often would you say you say him during that period?
A: During that time? The beginning. 3 or 4 times a week.
Q: To the mid 70’s. Late 70’s.
A: While Riki was alive.
Q: The late 70’s, That’s 25 years. …Where’d you see him? He come to the restaurant?
A: Yeah. Well, he was with Riki and we meet there and we meet here. He comes to the restaurant….And then, of course, those days, we all had big money. We all go to clubs. He was always in the club. Plus his bills were bigger than mine, because he’d always have ten gangsters with him. I was a free lancer. But Machii ordered food for everybody. I think I told you, when he finishes, “OK. Let’s go.” The other guys didn’t get the food yet. He always gets the first steak. By the time they bring the rest of the steaks, he’s finished. And you got to leave the table. The food never showed up.
But those days you go to the Latin Quarter, Copacabana, Hanabasha, Benibasha. The Akasaka route. After that was gone, you go to Club Riki and the Cosmopolitan club. And club 88. They were on this street here, see. Except Club Riki was over here where NET is. That street. What do you call that street? Where you come out on the street, you come to the China restaurant. Sanyo. You know, where the old GI hotel was. Then they got a Chinese restaurant. They got a street that goes this way. That street was Riki Apartment. And Riki’s club was there. And he had another property in the back, too. So we’d go there. That was Club Riki.
GINZA MACHII (1989)
Q: When was the last time you saw Ginza Machii?
A: Oh, ten years ago. 12 years ago. I met him by accident in Immigration. He was getting a visa and I was getting a visa.
Q: What was that like?
A: That’s the last I saw him. And after that he got sick. (authors note: 12 years ago was when the Lockheed Scandal broke, essentially ruining Machii’s career) You know, the old days, Immigration visas were down in Shinagawa. But not like today. You can’t even get near the fucking place. Thousands and thousands and thousands of god damn applicants. Those days it wasn’t that bad. Still took time. Today you get it quick right. If you can get to the window…But after that, he got sick. We went different ways. But his henchmen would always come around. I mean I could pick up the phone and call them. And soon I’d have one or two come here real quick like.
But today these guys are sophisticated. They’re not what they used to be.
Today they all got their niches and they don’t let nobody know what they’re doing. It isn’t like the gangster in the States. Dutch Schulz was selling beer. This guy running the numbers on the horses or…this country I don’t know what they’re doing….Like they talk about a Medellen cartel that’s selling dope. Today what the Japanese gangster does is very difficult to analyze. Or advertise. He’s there. There’s no question about it. They pass a lot of money among themselves. I mean I’ve seen that.
Did you ever go to Machii’s Caravansary?
Q: Once about ten years ago.
A: Must have cost you and arm and a leg.
Q: I didn’t pay. The president of Grolier took me there. I remember that. Guy named H. Nakao. Back in 1972.
A: So book salesmen were making money.
Q: They were making a lot of money. Shit. Fucking Britannica.
(Story about Britannica. Salesman of the month story. Arrested in Kobe for harassing potentialn customers with late-night visits.. Sells 2 sets of Encyclopaedia’s to guards. Books are in English. Nobody can read them.).
A..I knew …..this guy…operated …Jewish kid, young kid….operating out of Osaka. He built a building in Osaka and they took it away from him or something. And he opened a restaurant here where the old Italian Gardens was. Steak house down in the basement. They used to steal all the steaks everyday. What the hell was that son of a bitches name. Anyway, but he had 700 salesman. Hey, he was selling books.
(PIMPING: HOTEL NEW YORK)
A: In early postwar days, there were very little pimps. What can the pimp do? He can’t control no girls. The pimping business got big in Japan during the Korean War. But I don’t know if I told you that. They used to call them “nabeya.” And they used to…like I was involved with the Hotel New York, in Mukojima…I never forget. I had 52 rooms. And the GI’s from Korea used to come there and naturally they wanted girls . And the pimp would pick up these guys in the street. “Want to stay at a hotel?” you know. They used to catch these guys these guys as soon as they got off the base or whatever it was…the route was. And they bring them to a hotel…I can contracts with guys who would bring them to the Hotel New York. And they bring 4 guys or 5 guys or 10 guys, and they line up 20-30 girls. And you pick the one you want. And they make a contract that you stay with her for one week. You feed her. You buy her whatever she wants., if she wants something. And you get a hotel room and a broad for a certain price. .. A GI’d say this girl here. And, I don’t know what the fees were in those days. But the GI would say, I like that one. And that’s it. OK. Next guy. I like that one. And they paid maybe $50 a day. Or $25. I don’t know how much. I can’t remember. And the girls stayed with him, and they got up in the morning and they had breakfast together.
Because the girls came up to Tokyo to make money….
And they didn’t want to call themselves whores. They called themselves “only.” Because they stay with only one GI for one week. His R&R was one week.
Q: So you paid the girl, right? She’d smile. But you had to pay her
I believe if you check your history, the Japanese used to have their whores follow the armies, right. So what the hell. What’s the difference between a Japanese army in Malaysia with all those whores. And the American army in Tokyo. The girls will follow anyway. How would the girls say that: “A dick is a dick is a dick?” They’re all the same. Almost.
.
See. I also used to put slot machines in the hotels in those days. I told you. I used to bug them so nobody could win.
It’s like the circles go all the way around. There’s a guy asking me to bring in 100 slot machines to Yalta. You know what he said? “I can control every machine that comes into Russia.” But anyway, so.
A: Yeah.
Q: Oh, you’re talking about pimping, oh I see.
(GINZA MACHII & NICK)
Q: You stopped seeing Ginza Machii in 1980, you said
A: Probably. Yeah. He’s sick at home. He doesn’t go out anymore. You know Machii bought a big home in Hollywood. Who did he buy it from?
Q: I didn’t read that.
A: He paid millions of fucking dollars from a movie star’s home. And I asked my wife the other day, do you think he’s sitting there in Hollywood in his big home? He’s sitting over here.
Q: Sumiya told me he was living in that building the TSK.CCC building.
A: Yeah, I been to that apartment that he’s got up there. Boy, let me tell you. He’s got a tennis court on the roof, you know. His tennis court. Not anybody. Just his.
Q: What else is there.
A: When I went there, of course, you can’t get in the apartment. You know, the elevator will probably not stop at his floor or something like that. Taiho used to live there. You know, the sumo-san (Taiho was grand champion). He used to live there. And when I went in his apartment, he had the old Japanese samurai hallway, what would you say it, the hallway would be samurai style, it’s got round stones in the middle, the little black ones all around it so you walk on the main one like the stump of a tree. Like that. And all black lacquer. It give you the impression it was a samurai home. But I was only up there once.
…you know the way the Japanese build their homes, with the 4 x 4 sticking out. And the floor was all black stones with big steppingstones….Between the stones were little black cherry stones. I don’t know what the hell you call them. But, of course, the place was immaculate and very, very beautiful. A long way from where he used to live before. He used to live Mita House before. Near Mita house. Across the street from Mita House.
Q: Expensive samurai swords displayed?
A: I don ‘t know.
Q: Is he married?
A: Oh, yes. Of course. He’s probably got kids. But he keeps that part of his life extremely quiet. My wife would know. She would know. Yeah, the wife is this, the wife is that. Fuck, I don’t even know if I’m alive.
Q: When did he stop thinking of you as a Mafia man? Ginza Machii.
A: Well, I used to tell him all the time I’m not. Because boy, if you don’t say you’re not, these people will think that you can do things for them. So I got no relation with those guys. I know who they are. I probably could walk over and say hello. But I ain’t gonna get involved…I told you what he did with Pascual Perez, one day.
Q: About the million yen?
A: Yeah, how would you like to sit down at a meeting like that. Shit, you know.Then he laughed and kept the money. Boy, you do that in the States with somebody, they ain’t gonna laugh and keep the money. They’ll hire somebody else and get rid of you.
Q: What was Ginza Machii’s reaction when Riki got killed? Did you talk to him about that?
A: No. Just his boys. Of course, you know, we know them all. They come here. Of course, Riki and Machii were very, very, very good friends. They were both Koreans. And I used to go out with those guys. And, of course, when they killed Riki, he sent those boys after them. And I think…of course Noguchi got stabbed in the deal. And now I think Noguchi is retired because of the knife wounds that he got….He was the one that stabbed the guy back that stabbed Riki. His job was to get him and he went and got him. I don’t know what happened to Noguchi ever since. I think he’s gone outta the…He could be dead for all I know. Or he’s retired. But of course those days, it’s all in the newspaper.
Q: But what was Ginza Machii’s personal…did you ever talk to him about that?
A: No.
Q: You saw him 2 or 3 times a week and you
A: Yeah, but you can’t talk to those things. Kawaii so (it’s a pity) or something. You don’t want to get involved, because he was sending his people out to get revenge and I’m not exactly the guy to stand on any side of the sidewalk. If you go against the group that killed Riki, they’ll come after you. I mean, who am I gonna call. Machii? Shit, don’t …not interested.
Q: But you didn’t commiserate with him or anything?
A: You cry the blues.You can’t help it. I mean Riki got hurt. But then again, Riki brought it on himself too. You got to remember that part. Riki hit the guy or some shit like that. The guy came back and stabbed him. Whatever the real details are I don’t know.
But, of course, what can you do. I mean Riki died real quick like. Nobody expected him to die. He got a little knife wound. And, of course, people were visiting him. They didn’t like anybody to visit him. And these are all the Tosei-kai people. They come over here and “Riki’s OK. We saw him yesterday. He’s fine.” This that and the other thing. Nobody thought that something serious like that was going to happen. Riki died, how many years ago..
Q: 1963, 64 he died.
A: Jeez. That’s 27 years ago. Long time ago.
Q: But I mean, when you talked to him about Riki, did he look sad?
A: Oh, yes. Of course, of course. Those guys were like brothers. Hey.
Q: Did he cry?
A: No, no, no, no. Just. Well, let me say it this way. When Riki died I think Machii changed. He lost that pizzazz.. Is that what you call it? I think that started him away from Crime Incorporated.
Q: What do you mean, he lost that pizzazz.
A: Well, this was a guy…they were like shit and piss, you know. So when Riki went by the way of the knife, I think Machii just sort of sobered up. Changed his way of thinking. And probably planned how to get out of the organizations. Because what, he retired 5 or 10 years ago. So you can imagine. I’d say Riki’s death probably made him think a different way of thinking. They were both probably the same age, uh? Both had the same upbringing. 2 peas in a pod.
Q: They start singing when they went out together?
A: Oh, they were so close together they were…when I used to go out with them. Of course, we all spoke English and Japanese. Ne. Even though the English was terrible and the Japanese was terrible. But Riki spoke pretty good English. Machii, of course, his English was terrible. Machii didn’t. I don’t even think he could speak 10 words of English. In those days, my Japanese was no good, but there was a common bond and there was a way to negotiate and talk to each other. But those two guys were inseparable.
Q: They sing together in night clubs?
A: They were not the singing type. I never heard Riki sing. I never heard Machii sing. But they’d go together and they were very, very close.
MACHII (1989)
A: Well, Machii, these days he’s very, very difficult to get to. He lives right over here. Even I can not get in there. And he’s a personal friend of mine for 20-30 years. So it would be very difficult. Cuz…I doubt if you can get in there….You don’t want to play that …he’s a dangerous man….He’s retired now. He’s got a bad heart. He’s physically probably sick worse than I am. But still, he’s extremely highly respected by the fucking gangsters. So if he gets….
Even I don’t press my luck. I don’t insist on seeing him. They come here. His gangster boys come here. Different groups come to my restaurant. They act like….
I tell you they are probably better gentlemen than some of the fucking customers. Because this is not where they make money, this is where they spend money. Where they make money they’re I told you what he did to Maurice one day….Remember I told you the guy was sitting with the French counselor?
Q: Oh, took him outside and beat the shit out of him.
A: You better believe it. Cuz he just didn’t say hello. Jesus…You.
probably son of a bitches.
But if you ever go to Hawaii, I can introduce you to some of his ex-henchmen, who live in Hawaii.
But these guys, you’re never gonna get anything out of them. They’re never gonna talk. I would probably…I’d give up that route. It’s too dangerous….
Q: What about the…can you describe any of the gang wars then.
A: Well, there wasn’t to me….I told you the story of how he became the boss…you know the 3 guys. And to me, he was the boss of Tokyo. And that’s it. And up in Hokkaido is still their domain. I don’t know who’s got Kyushu but I had trouble with a gang…I had trouble in Yokota on time. I dealt with…I didn’t know who the hell they were but his name was Yoshida and they tried to grab the restaurant..
(ROPPONGI)
Q: What was Roppongi like in those days?
A: Well, what you see today. There was no Roppongi. Oh we had trolley tracks. And I thought I did pretty good when I went way down there where the highway was, to get a piece of property. And the value of this property was near the Russian Embassy. And then they had Hardy Barracks up here. But as far as Roppongi Intersection was concerned, there was absolutely nothing. It wasn’t as big as it was now. They tore the buildings down. They got rid of the people….You know Roppongi’s a tree. (means 6 trees) When I was in here, came in this are in 1956, probably the tree was still standing at the intersection there. But I opened. & then the Club 88 opened. Then, near the 88, another club opened up. …Then slowly…the New Latin Quarter opened up in the New Japan Hotel. And then the Benibasha. & I used to go to the Ginbasha, which was in Atago-cho. This is the guy Niita. His Chinese name is Pheng. His son and my son were born on the same day. & I could tell you his son is very very very rich. & my son is not very, very, very rich. So it doesn’t mean shit if you’re born on the same day, under the same stars, in the same area. The stars will shine on one but it doesn’t mean they gonna shine on the other. & now the son owns the place in Harajuku…Viva , near Kiddyland. He owns that bldg. His father gave it to him. & of course, the father owns next to the Latin Quarter & the Ginbasha..
But when I started in the restaurant business, then I started going to all these different places. LQ. Copa. Benibasha. Hanabasha. Ao-Shiroi. Club Oscar is right where my office is now. Chrysler Motors is there now. But in those days you go club hopping. From one club to another. From one club to another. Get home 4,5,6 o’clock in the morning. If you got home at all.
Then we used to go another place where Armando Federico would play the piano. Only man that escaped the Manila Prison. Japanese threw him in prison and he escaped that prison. Fantastic piano player. But he was a little guy. I don’t know. He must have squeezed through the bars. But I think he’s the only man that escaped that Manila place.He worked in supper club owned by Frank Sakakibara, who opened, when I closed my (first) restaurant in 1930..I mean 1964. Showa 39 nen. He opened acorss the street.What the hell did he call it? Guy from Hollywood. Used his name. But he’s guy to went to buy the Christina. Just sold for 12 million dollars. Some group bought it. Gonna to buy the run it in Mexico north of Acapulco. That’ll be tomorrow’s newspaper. But he went down Christina for $2 million. I couldn’t help but laugh because Onassis died. But he said Christina 2….I know it’s made in Japan…That’s the one where Anthony Quinn played Tycoon. Pushed button. Side of ship came down. Etc. etc. blah…
I wish I could have buyed that boat. But not $2 million.
Here it is 20 years later. $12 million. Of course, today $12 mill is same as $2 mill then.
But there was a lot of running around in those days. Gessekai was another one.
Q: Why’d you choose Roppongi?
A: Cuz it’s foreigners neighborhood. Pizza & spaghetti. You not gonna sell them to a Japanese….Hardy Barracks was over there. & then where Dr. Akesenoff is…(Int’l Clinic) that used to be American Legion club. And I was the historian for the American Legion. And I used to sit in that living room that’s now his….come in from Russian Embassy and Hotel Okura. & I said “Gee that’s a good location.” & I aimed for it & I got it. & I got my restaurant there. It turned out to be a mistake. Cuz hiway came through and knocked me out of busines. But they paid me a lot of money. I should have taken that money and run. But then, there was much more to be made. But Roppongi was the gaijin settlement. Hardy Barracks there. Russian Embassy. Okura Hotel was there. Actually it was…
You’re sitting at my new table by the way.
(MISCELLANEOUS: PRO-WRESTLING FIX)
Q: Okay, I got more. These are random questions now. Riki ever tell you about fixing bouts. Rehearsing bouts.
A: Ah, of course, that was pro-wrestling.It was always like that. I knew a guy called Pepper Martin. Pepper Martin was here. And, of course, quite a few of them were here…Now, he’s a movie star or thinks he’s a movie star. Or trying to be a movie star. He acted in “The Mean Machine.” With Burt Reynolds. Course, he would be straight out. He would say what’s gonna happen. How you go from one hold to another. You know that kind of crap. But it’s all. It’s entertainment.
Of course, the pro wrestler gets mad if you say he belongs on the entertainment page, not the sport page. I heard that argument many times before from pro-wrestlers.
Q: You remember the Sharpe Brothers matches. They fixed too?
A: You can’t say they’re fixed. They got to end at a certain time with a certain winner. In other words, you know it yourself. You been in Japan long enough to know that if Rikidozan loses, there ain’t gonna be nobody there tomorrow. So, he has to win. You know, they can win one fall and then the other fall is even. Americans can generally win the first fall. The Japanese win the second fall or something like that. The Japanese win the 3rd fall. And they won. And they go through all the bullshit. But these guys are pros. They’re not amateurs. It’s the same thing as a boxing match. In a boxing match, the fighter. One fighter can get $5,000. The other can get $500. Before the fight. Winning don’t mean nothing. If he wins, maybe the next fight he can get more money….(boxing bs)…So pro wrestling, the Japanese has to win regardless.
I think a wrestler will tell you that if he gets a grip on you, he can hold that grip for an hour. Then what do you do. You sitting in the stands waiting. The guy never lets the grip go? What the hell kind of show is that? So, they have to play the game. They have to make the customers cheer and yell. You show how smart you are by getting out of a grip. It’s all bullshit. You see where the Russians won the title the other day? Russian fighters. They got like 26 matches and 22 knockouts.
Q: What about …remember his fights with Lou Thesz?
A: Yeah.
Q: Lou Thesz was a real wrestler.
A: Lou Thesz was a world champion.
Q: He didn’t fuck around. He didn’t..
A: Well, you get money. If his title is at stake, nobody is going to beat him. But they’re not talking about titles. You know, he’s the great champion, this that and that and the other thing. But his title is not at stake. And I remember, I think Pepper Martin used to get $800 a wrestling match, or $800 bucks a day while he was in Japan. I imagine Lou Thesz got a tremendous amount of money. But he’s not gonna put up his title.
Q: But he did put up his title.
A: Well then he can’t lose. He’s gonna fight to win. And he’ll do anything he can to win. But then again, you know, I know as much about pro-wrestling as you do.
Q: In the beginning, when Rikidozan was enormously popular, didn’t the people know that it was fixed?
A: They don’t care. Don’t the people know that the umpires on the Giants (sic) are all pro-Giants. Do people care?
Q: I don’t think they know. I don’t think they pay that much attention.
A: They ain’t got the brains to know. They read the paper. That’s it.
Q: But I mean this people in front of the tv, standing in Ueno Park and hanging from the trees, falling off the branches..
A: That’s how they started, anyway.
Q: But he was so popular because he would beat the Americans. They didn’t have an inkling then that it was fixed, in the beginning?
A: I don’t think so. I don’t even think they know it today.
Q: Yeah, they know it today.
A: You think so.
Q: Yeah. Everybody says it. I was wondering about in the beginning., because…Pro-wrestling isn’t anywhere near as popular as it was.
A: Oh, 25 years ago. Riki’s time. When Riki started it, and he started karate. And nobody had karate except Riki. And the truth is that if somebody really hits you with a karate chop, you ain’t gonna get up. They’ll spin your fucking head off. But he ain’t about to hit you really hard.
Q: In the beginning the fans thought it was for real…or if they had their doubts they didn’t care because it gave them hope.
A: Remember, it was a defeated country. And anybody who does anything against the American, the foreigners, they cheered them. They do the same thing today, only today it’s commercial.
(RIKIDOZAN CHARACTER)
Q: Did I tell you that story about Primo Canera?
A: No. I met him, you know, when I was a kid in New York.
Q: Big guy.
A: Big son of a bitch, of course.
Q: Where’s he from?
A: He’s from Italy….What is he. 6’8” 6’9”. He had a pair of shoes that fit on the table here. There’d be no room for nobody else….What about Primo?
Q: Well, after Riki got his thing going, he developed this pattern where the gaijin were the bad guys and they would always lose. In the beginning, it wasn’t quite like that. The Sharpe Brothers, Lou Thesz. These guys were real…
A: They were professional pros. They knew how to wrestle. They knew how to….Antonio Rocco. Remember that one?
Q: So then he got his little act down and he knew what the fans wanted to see. So he brought Primo Canera over one time and he had his first match in Tokyo and Riki let him have his karate chop about 15 times. It had absolutely no effect.
A: And Primo got pissed off and punched him?
Q: No, no, he just…he fought. And Riki couldn’t beat him. You know, it was just like swatting a fly off. And so, they had dinner the next night down in Kobe, down in Kobe. They had a night of before the next match. And they’re sitting there in this geisha house and Riki pulls out a sword and he sticks it in Primo Canera’s chest. He’s like that. And he just looks at him. And he smiles. And sez, “This is a present from me to you.” But just that one look was enough so that Primo Canera got the message. And the next match he started going down when he got hit with a karate chop. But he didn’t want to play along in the beginning. He was fighting for real. That was in that book I read.
A: I know somebody got pissed off and hit him. I forgot who the hell it was. Riki was playing this fucking game and the guy got pissed off. He hit Riki.
Q: In the ring?
A: Yeah. He really hurt that son of a bitch…Oh, Riki wasn’t a…I don’t like you to call him that because there’s people who come out with a fucking knife and try to …I’d stand up to Riki many days. Come on Riki, if you think you’re tough. You know, this is no fucking ring. This is the street. He wouldn’t do anything.
Q: That’s a good story.
A: The thing is, his son is around. And they got these ultra-nationalists. You got to be very careful. And now I’m 70 and I can’t defend myself. But there were a lot of guys who were big and strong. But Riki basically was a hell of a nice guy. Of course, everybody might portray him as a mean person, but he was not mean. He was easy to get along with….Like the day I was trying to screw his girl friend. He wasn’t angry. He didn’t get mad at me. He hit her. What the hell did you hit her for? I’m gonna marry that girl. Jesus .That’s the time when he wanted to watch us screw. Can you imagine that? Fucking Riki.
Q:: Unless he got drunk.
A: Oh, when Riki got drunk, that’s a different guy. That’s not the same Riki. You know he could get drunk. He used to drink straight bourbon. He never put a fucking ice cube or a god damn glass…or an ounce of water in any of his drinks.
(talks to headwaiter)
….never. Straight bourbon.
Q: He drink a lot?
A: He was a good drinker. He was a strong mother fucker, yo. He could drink bourbon like it was going out of style. And if you tried to keep up with him, he’d kill you….
Ebihara died the other day. I made him a world champion. Then how he pays back. He opens a pizza place near my Yokota restaurant. That’s gratitude for you.
Q: Maybe he’s trying to honor you.
A: I shoulda let him stay in jail. Dumb shit.
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
CUT MATERIAL
FREDDY
This guy Freddy Miyake he likes the blow women. He thinks that’s great. He just tell me his young girl had been down to see him. This is last night 12 o;clock. He calls me. I can’t say much on the phone. My wife is there. She can figure out what the other side is saying. I say, “you know he had his girl there for 10 days. Must be Mariko.” Don’t want to get involved in who it was. Forgettabout it. It’s easy to check it out cuz he’s Okinawan.
I shouldn’t call her a fucking girl because she wasn’t fucking. She was a skinny thing, I mean she was perfect English, she couldn’t speak Japanese and she sang a Japanese song and won. Imagine that. They asked her in Japanese a question and she looked worse than I did. And she’s looking around for who’s gonna help her. But Jesus Christ she was beautiful. God Damn it. But I imagine she weighed 40 kilos. And her tits didn’t grow yet.
Q: Ever go to Happy Valley Dance Hall in Shibuya.
A: I was Shimbashi Ginza man. I never bothered with Shibuya. That was Charlie Manos’s territory.
Q: Why was that illegal to …
A: Well, he didn’t really buy it. He confiscated the car.
Q: Printed pesos where no good?
A: Q: What did he think of that investigation.
A:
Ningyo-cho. Rikidozan, I think had a wrestling center over there. In the same area. When he first started wrestling.
(MACHII)
Even I don’t press my luck. I don’t insist on seeing him. They come here. His gangster boys come here. Different groups come to my restaurant. They act like….
I tell you they are probably better gentlemen than some of the fucking customers. Because this is not where they make money, this is where they spend money. Where they make money they’re probably son of a bitches.
TANASHI
Q: He do this just because of you?
A: Yeah.
Q: Because you asked him.
Q: He had no grounds to do that other than the fact that he could intimidate you because he was a gangster..
A: Well, I mean….
Q: You ever see anyone killed in Japan in all these gang wars etc you been involved in.
A: Well, we had a kid killed in the Yokota trouble. That was a Tosei-kai boy that got killed…..didn’t see it, but they were fighting over my restaurant….on the street there. Or in the town there. Then we called the boys from Tokyo. Mr. Machii’s group. And they came out there with their fucking sword and machine guns and there was a holy war there and one of the Machii boys got killed (Yae says the kid who got killed was from the Tanashi gumi)
KILLING
But they did knife each other….one of the kids that I brought up from Tokyo got killed. They cut his stomach out. And of course, they must have lost some dead too.
And I’m pretty sure the police probably got involved when there’s a death in…and asked them to settle their agreements.
Nick: I got all my money back. Plus some more. And they had to keep paying to the Crime Incorporated. And they had to keep paying for the kid that died. And, I got the restaurant Yeah. I make to make money because I don’t know how much money was involved, but the guy had to pay 2 or 3 times the amount of money.
(i.e. Nick bought him out). And they had to pay…when somebody dies you got to pay a lot of money to the bereaved family. They paid. They paid everything. (note: Nick paid solatium via TSK) Machii. Machii was a powerful, powerful man in those days.
in one week, it ended. Less than a week probably. Then I got the restaurant back…1 week war.
(JAPANESE GANGSTERS FIGHTING SPIRIT)
(Before tape starts is conversation about two old gangsters Whiting met previous night in Kamakura bar, from then old Shinjuku Wada gang. They bragged out old yakuza ritual of stabbing self with sharpened wooden chopstick to show fighting spirit, etc.)
A: The thing is if the Japanese got so much guts and fighting spirit, why do they talk so fucking much when they get arrested? They’re worse than the radio. Jesus Christ.
Q: That’s a very good question. Not all of them talk.
A: All of them. All of them. They get in that fucking place and they just spill the beans. They commit a crime and they confess to it. Like these guys that just got kidnapped…they kidnapped somebody, a printer or some shit like that, for twenty million yen, they already confessed. What the hell are you gonna commit a crime for if you’re gonna confess to it. I mean it’s stupid.
Q: Yeah, but Matsubara and Machii and those guys, they didn’t confess, did they?
A: They confessed because they went to jail for what, a few years. So they confessed…they had a gun. It was a fair fight.
But the Japanese enjoy when 2 gangsters fight and one days. They encourage that. It”s one way to decimate the population of gangsters. America…they would protect the…don’t fight fellows. It’s against the law to shoot each other. But go out and shoot other people. That’s ok.
So you enjoyed your life in Kamakura yesterday. But they were Tosei-kai.
Q: Wada gumi is what they said.
A; I thought down there was old Tosei-kai. I don’t even remember…
Q: The guy had a nice tatoo. He said it took two months to do it. He said it was really painful, with the needle.
A: He should be very proud. He doesn’t have to wear a T-shirt anymore. He’s got his own T-shirt, right.
Q: They kept talking. They kept plying me with sake. It’s brutal to mix sake with beer.
A: You should not…because you don’t eat….If you’re gonna be…I hate to say it to you…If you’re gonna be a drinker without eating, just, wherever the kitchen is, try to get a glass of olive oil. Or bread and butter. A lot of butter on it. A little bread. That’ll coat your lungs and then you don’t get drunk. You get drunk because the alcohol goes in and spreads out. But if the alcohol goes in, like the olive oil, it’ll go in and go straight out. You’ll be peeing whiskey and half olive oil.
Q: I’ll try to remember that.
A: Well you should know that. It’s a common thing.
(I don’t know why I’m typing this)
A: Always eat anything with oil. Oily based foods. If you can do this, eat butter.
(Schedule discussion)
A: I got to go to court on the 22nd.
Q: Can I get something to eat? Too early?
A: Pinto….
(MISCELLANEOUS: YAKUZA)
…my office was in the keishicho. A little shitty desk in a little office. It was on the 5th floor of the old bldg. And that’s where the had the courtroom. And I went in there one day, and listened to the court, and they had this guy called Sekine (Ken Sekine), who had a machine gun and shot up Shimbashi Station.
Q: Was he a yakuza, gangster? (yes)
A: I don’t know what the hell he was. That would be 1946. Funny how some names stick. And some names don’t stick.
Q: Ando shot Yokoi in argument over Yokoi.
A: Yokoi was dirty money.
(Mistaken ID of Goto, Noboru, head of Tokyu, owned politicians)
Q: Remember how I told you I had a guy had boat next to me called Kitty. I had the 53 foot cabin cruiser. He had the Kitty.Which is a little plywood shit boat. Then he bought the Toyatsu, bought a big 56 foot cabin cruiser)
Q: (Mistaken tale of guy who stabbed Rikidozan. More unsubstantiated bullshit.)
A: Riki got stabbed at 9 at night. Noguchi stabbed the guy that stabbed him.
SIDE B
(counter 000)
and this guy stabbed Noguchi. Noguchi stabbed the guy. A 3rd guy involved.
Noguchi is a good friend of mine. You can get to meet him. You get more stories. But I don’t know, these guys don’t talk too much.
Q: That’s a problem.
A: But I think they’re all retired now.
(More BS…)
Q: Kubo Masao. You know him. You ever meet him?
A: He Indonesian?
Q: No.
A: I know Kubo. Heavily decked out in Jewelry.
Q: Really rich guy.
A: Yes, that’s Kubo. Dark skin. Like I say, Indonesian type. I know…I mean I shouldn ‘t say I know him. I’ve spoken to him a few times. But I don’t know him. But he used to go the clubs in those days when I used to go. And he was loaded down with gold, jade, all that kind of crap. Kubo. Well-dressed. Good looking man. Must have been very rich.
Q: Sukarno used to stay at his house when he came.
A: Indonesia. See? See the relation.
Q: He’s the one who sent Dewi.
A: Dewi. And 5 girls. Yeah. He would be the type. Dewi stayed. I told you Dewi’s brother was killed by Sukarno. Cuz he tried to bring the sister back. But Kubo probably was an Indonesian.
By the way, Dave Jones is having a party at a hotel…inviting you to spend 15,000 yen to say goodbye to him? I got one.
Q: I never met him. I never even said hello to him. So why would I want to say goodbye to him.
A: So you save 15,000 yen. But you know there’s two brothers. There were Latin Quarter. They worked at the Latin Quarter and they used to park the cars. They were Korean kids. One was called Jimmy. And Jimmy had a fantastic memory. And if you could trace this kid. You can get anything you want to know about Kubo or anybody in that era. Cuz this Jimmy he had a terrific memory. And I know after the Latin Quarter collapsed or whatever it did (note: burned down), he went to work for the Skyroom in Yokohama near Yokohama Station, he was working over there. If you can get close to somebody who was in that era, who knows him name, this kid could probably give you a tremendous amount of information. Cuz he’s got a good memory. Like he knows Kubo very well. Cuz Kubo used to go to the Latin Quarter.
Q: This guy (crime writer) Sasaki said he interviewed you once. Wrote a story about your restaurant. Long time ago. Late 50’s I think, he started out as a writer. He says he remembers you, and how the stairs used to creak when you walked up them.
A: Well, they weren’t meant for 200 pounders. Well, you should get that interview and look at it.
Q: He said it was just about introducing the food and what the pizza was like.
A: I don’t remember. I had a lot of people come around and bother me. Those days I was doing so fucking good I was arrogant.
Q: He said Machii had a bodyguard named Uchida. He’s the one who used to shoot at the clock in the Ginza. Ever hear of him?
A: No.
Q: That was about 10 years before you and Machii got to know each other.
A: Oh, look, we got customers.
Q: He also said that in Showa 20 (1945) Machii had a fight with a “kakutogi senmon” (martial arts expert). Some guy, martial arts expert, very big gaijin, said he came walking down the street toward Machii, walking down the Ginza, they bumped shoulders and Machii hit him with many body blows and knocked him down. On the Ginza. He became famous for that. Because he beat the shit out of this big gaijin guy. Martial arts gaijin.
(Nick checks audio watch)
A: You know who he’s…is it degner. (meaning: Don Drager). Chuck Norris….It could be Dan Degner.
Q: This was 40 years ago.
A: Yeah, Dagner was an ex-marine. He was the number one man in karate in Japan. I mean the schools and whatnot. (note: this is Don Drager). I may not have the name correct. But it’s very close to that. And he’s famous. But he recently died. And I doubt if Machii and ten gangsters could hurt that guy. 20 gangsters. Cuz that guy was a martial arts champion. You name it. But anybody who’s in judo or the martial arts, can remember his name. …..he was a marine colonel. And he was not a big guy. He might have weighed 180-190 pounds. Which I don’t consider big. Look at me. I’m 180 pounds. I don’t consider myself big anymore. But if it was that guy…Maurice, yeah. Maurice, you know that name.
Cuz this guy Bill Mahoney that stays in my house in Hawaii which I don’t let him stay anymore. He claims he beat up Maurice. I just don’t believe it. But then they say sumo people are afraid to fight. Sumo’s all balance. They don’t like punching.
Q: You mean sumo, karate, or judo…
A: Dagner was the number one man at the time. But I think if you ask Corky, Corky will come like that. Don’t mention my name.
(hack, hack, cough.)
A: Dying.
Q: Don’t laugh and cough at the same time. It’s not good for you.
A: I can’t stay in the restaurant with this loudmouth that I can’t.
(TSK GANGSTERS) (JOE CAMERO)
Q: OK. Tell me about Joe Camero.
A: I can’t tell you much about him.
Q: Just tell me what you know,.
A: I don’t know. You even make me wonder whether I spoke to him in Japanese or English. Must have spoke to him in English, right?
Q: What’d you say he looked like. Pug nosed?
A: He looked like he was a fighter.I think if you check real close he was a professional fighter before that.
Q: Pro boxer.
A: If you say he came from the States, well then he was a fighter in the States.
Q: I don’t know. Somebody speculated he was a GI. Got a discharge here, but he was from Mexico or Puerto Rico. Or something. Latin American. Spanish Heritage.
A: I thought he was Japanese. (note: Nick is right) Maybe he told me what he was, but, I ..you know…in those days, there was another guy…you know you talking about the days when they had Shinjuku-san-chome….That used to be where the Shinjuku post office, where the Shinjuku kuyakusho (ward office) is now, go down that street, and the trolley used to go in and out. Trolley used to go in back of the houses. That area there. And that was Tosei-kai area there. Of course, everything in Tokyo was Tosei-kai, especially Shinjuku.
Q: He had a broken nose, or a squashed nose.
A: He was a pug. He had a pugilist nose.
Q: Quashed in.
A: Well you know he was hit by a fucking something.
Q: Battered nose.
A: Joe was a …like I say…most of those guys were nice people. You know. They were not dealing in dope. It wasn’t as bad as today. It’s terrible. It’s getting worse everyday.
(Business talk with Boopie. About buying portable mike for karaoke)
Q: So you don’t…
A: I know Joe was a little guy. I’d say he was …he might have been 135 pounds. He couldn’t have been more heavier than that. He was not a heavyweight.
Q: He was an enforcer.
A: In those days, they didn’t have guy, they had volume. They wanted to do something, they’d call 50 people.
Q: (riff through thick files) This is all Nicola Zappetti here.
A: If somebody ask me what did I probably write it in 3 lines.
Q: Anyway, he was supposedly the only gaijin yakuza.
A: I knew him very well, but I never…I never thought he was a gaijin. Probably in those days, they didn’t want to show it. Eh? Of course, they had other guys. Later on they had Ben Winsinger who thought he was a gangster. And George Kajioka. What do you figure? George Kajioka is what? Japanese? He died in Hawaii. He was the boss of Hawaii for a while.
Q: What was the other guy’s name?
A: Ben Winsinger.He was a German.
Q: What did he do?
A: Oh, he’d try to hang around with them and he’d try to be a gangster. As a matter of fact, Winsinger was the guy who caused this guy from the Post, what was his name, Steve Dunleavy. Winsinger egged this Dunleavy…or he egged Matsubara to fight with Dunleavy. And that was like matching a flyweight with a heavyweight. Cuz Dunleavy was a mean, mother fucking Australian. But I think Winsinger instigated that, in Tom’;s restaurant years ago in Nogizaka. Then, of course, Steve Dunleavy’s days in Japan became numbered. And he left and he became a big wheel.
Q: What did Winsinger do?
A: He just hung around. He was sort of in their group. But he didn’t …like when I’d go out with Riki or Machii, he’s not in that class. He just used to hang around with the low class bums. But you can’t say it that way cuz they’ll come over here and tell me about high class and bring me up to the 10th floor and throw me out the window and say “You’re high class.”
Q: Okay.
A: Course, most of them are not business anymore. They’re old and retired. Cuz you’re talking 30 years ago. Like me. Everybody gets old.
(FAMILY LIFE, FIRST MARRIAGE)
Q: You got married in Yokohama…was that counselate or embassy.
A: Counselate. It didn’t rate as an embassy. When I was marrying the girl from Fujisawa.
Like I said, it’s on the tape. I got a copy of the tape, by the way. That CBS put out. With that guy’s name Dan Rather….You know it’s funny, Bob Simon got stuck in the desert out there and he got back alive. He’s fucking lucky.
(FAMILY LIFE)
Q: When you got married for the first time and set up household. Big western style house. Tell me what kind of appliances you had.
A: In those days. I never realized how much money I had….I bought land 80 cents a tsubo. 300 tsubo. 90,000 total. Which was fucking nothing. Today, it’s may be 5 million yen a tsubo, maybe more. Kugenuma. Inside. When I first got married I lived in house of a ship designer for NHK (huh?), name was Kurosawa. Still there in the same house. Then was my son was born which would be Showa 23. 1948. I moved into house my wife has got now. And 80 times 300 tsubo ..80 cents a tsubo. 90,000. 240 fucking dollars. Can you believe that. And I told my wife let’s buy the whole block. And she said no.
Q: What kind of heating did you have?
A: In those days, there’s no such thing as central heating or air condition. You have a kerosene heater in your house. And city gas. But those days they didn’t have Tokyo Gas selling units. They didn’t have none of that crap. And my particular house. I had a gas range. I had a regrigerator. I had a gas operated Servel. Did you ever hear of that refrigerator? It had a bunson burner….The bunson burner was light and it made the Servel refrigerator work. Then I had a Capehart Radio Phonograph which was the top of the barrel. …A very, very deluxe operation….I describe it. First of all you have to have 4 or 5 guys who are very physical to pick it up. That’s how heavy that mother fucker was. And then, you openedn it up. It was a cabinet. A big cabinet….Records were stacked on player. Bottom record would come out. It’d play. Then turned it over and then it came back up here and the next bottom one came out. And it had a very, very high class sophisticated shortwave operation. Boy you could dial fucking to the sixth zero or something like that. And there was a button on the thing and you pushed the button and you changed the record. And my boy Vince would push the button, he was fascinated with the record changing. And he’d push the button again and break my records. You know those days they had the 78 PRM records. They were made out of clay. Right. Something like that. They’d break very quick. I remember he ruined my whole “Schezerazade.”
Q: What’s that?
A: Light opera. Dance of the 7 Veils or some shit like that. That’s what I had at my house. And that’s how I lived. And, of course, I always had a car. The house that I built for a thousand yen a tsubo.
Q: How do you spell that opera’s name?
A: S-h-e-r-e-d-a-z-e….You know, it’s Arabian.
Q: What kind of car did you have then?
A: Oh, I remember, I had a green Chrsysler when I was in the military. I brought in a 1946- or 1947 Ford Convertible. That was the first car I brought in. I had that car for about four years. I smuggled in enough fucking lighter flints to pay for the car a few times. I had bags…I had the whole back end where the canvas went in, full of lighter flints. In those days, they had zippo lighters. And flints, they used to sell’em one piece, how much money, you know. I needed a bag, with about 3 or 4 kilos in one bag. And I don’t know. I had 50, 60, 70 kilos. Shit. You know I can’t say I put a penny in the bank.
Q: How was the gas range operated?
A: City gas.
Q: You have to wear heavy clothes in the winter?
A: Freeze your ass off. Course.
Q: You have to wear your overcoat in the house.
A: Well, almost like that. But that’s how the Japanese kept warm. They wear the big, fat kimonos. …I lived in a very high class neighborhood. Kugenuma was a very, very sophisticated area. Still. A Japanese house is a Japanese house. But I built a western style house. I didn’t build a Japanese style house.
Q: Did you have insulation?
A: I don’t think they built those things then. But I mean, my whole house was wooden floor.The house is still standing, you know that?
Q: They didn’t understand the concept of insulation then.
A: No. My wife has still god the old wooden shutters that you slide the living room door. Jesus, I could never believe that. I don’t understand how she could even think that fucking way.
Q: Do you ever see your wife?
A: Oh yeah sometimes. I’m on friendly relations with her.
Q: Do you think I could talk to her someday?
A: Oh, I don’t know….but yeah, what would she tell you? She could tell you what a son-of-a bitch bastard I am. She hates me. Who doesn’t.?
Q: You’re son. You get along with him?
A: I get along with him.
Q: He didn’t want to let you see his daughter one time?
A: Yeah, he didn’t want…Cuz see he had trouble with his wife. And if I show up then they see a gaijin. They don’t like that. But I went anyway. Cuz I was trying to find out where his wife ran away to. But you know what the principal said. “Everybody has trouble.” There must be a common problem with the wives and husbands.
Q: Wife is Japanese and she didn’t like the idea of having a gaijin grandpapa?
A: No, he changed his nationality because of the kids. You don’t want to be an American in this country. And you should know a little bit about that. But nobody gonna believe you. Why the Japanese such nice people…Ameicans are hypocrites. This guy Mayor Frank Fossi from Hawaii. Boy he gets out there and he says we don’t need you Japanese, get the hell out of here. You know what he did? He just came over here with a tourist group from Hawaii that encouraged the Japanese to come to Hawaii. Ain’t that something?
And you know another thing going on over there that’s very interesting, the Japanese wanted to buy a golf course, something like that, and he insisted that they give him 100 million yen to change the rules so that they can build a golf course. 100 million dollars. They offered 5. And he gave them a bad time. They went to 25. Now they’re up to 50. & they still didn’t get permission.
But he comes over here, hat in hand, looking for…fucking dago from New York. And an ex-Marine too.
Q: Your son changed his citizenship to the Japanese. He doesn ‘t like foreigners? He don’t like us. Basically, he don’t like his father. But you can’t help it because they’re subject to things that we don’t see, because we don’t see all the Japanese periodicals and we don’t see all the newspapers and we don’t see the slander sheets and the stories against the Americans. But a kid that’s growing up in Japan, he sees all that. He hears it from his friends. Yaho….
Q: What’s that?
A: Isn’t that a vulgar way to call somebody?
Q: Aho.
A: He’s a nice kid. He’s friendly and sociable, but..you see, you remember something that I told you which was…I don’t know how you write it in the book…but, the reason I’m anti-Japanese is that I got a Japanese wife…My particular wife is such a mean son-of-a bitch that I’m anti-Japanese. Arrogant. Stupid.
Q: We went through that before.
A: Yeah, so this is, so
Q: Can I meet Vince.
A: Sure.
Q: Will he talk to me?
A: Yeah.
Q: I’d like to meet everybody…..the one I really want to meet is Miss Hokkaido.
A: Well, I tell you, you gotta go up to Hokkaido to do that.
Q: Would she talk to me you think?
A: Yeah, you speak Japanese. She’s gotta be a bag by now. She was born in Showa 22. That’s 1947.
Q: 43. She’s probably in good shape. 10 years younger than Jane Fonda.
A: I think she fucked so much she’s probably…
Q: But your daughter is different from Vince? She’s more open minded?
A: (nods)
Q: She’s in New Zealand now. She’s another one I’d like to meet.
.(BS)
A: I had so much legal troubles…Judge Kondo, he was my good friend. He was in charge of the fucking divorce courts. Judge Kondo. That’s proof in the pudding. You go to court so many times you get to know the judges. The shacho (president) of the fucking saiban. Katei saiban (family court).
Q: Nice to see you again Nick. Haven’t seen you for a couple of years.
A: Always back. In and out. In and out. Well I got 3 divorces.
Q: Did you tell your wife I wanted to interview her? I told her that once. I met her. She said Ok.
A: No, you’re not gonna get her, today, she called before. She went to the Yokota restaurant. She wanted to go straight home.
Q: I’ll get her one of these nights. (ed. No you won’t)
A: Oh yeah. She’s here every night.
Q: When did you first meet her?
A: When I opened the restaurant.
Q: In 1956?
(POST YOSHIKO LIFE ..ABANDONED TURKISH BATH)
(JOE DIBELLO)
A: Yeah.
Q: But Mogami said he met you after the accident he visited you one day and you were living in this old shack with no water, no electricity, no heating, no nothing, and he said that she was with you.
A: No. Not her. That was the Meguro one. Yoshiko. You know where I lived? I lived at Atago-cho. And I lived at Joe Dibello’s house, or building, I should call it a building,…
(explains exact location of the house)
And next to that temple, was Joe Dibello, he was gonna make a steam bath operation. Some kind of stuff like that. And that’s when Joe started bringing amusement centers to Japan. You know the ferris wheel and the merry-go-around. And he was involved with a other guy called Earl Pitcock, who I think was involved in the deal in Manila, and they made a book on it. They made a book on that book. About the cigarettes. Who’s the guy who was the big man in cigarettes. They got tremendous trouble in Manila. I know the book. I know the story too. Anway, they got all fucked up with the circus or the carnivals that they used to have, I think, and that’s the building I moved in, because there was only gas, no electric, no water. It had a toilet. It probably had water. It had no electricity because it had tremendous, what do you call these things they put on the telephone poles, was a wooden building, two story building, and it was all tile and Turkish Baths and things like that. So you couldn’t get electricity in because the meter on the pole, it ain’t a meter, what do you call it on a pole? Generator. It’s not a generator. What do you put on it?
Q: Fuse box?
A: Big things like that. 50 thousand kilowatts like that. So you couldn’t get electricity. You had to pay a tremendous amount of money to get electricity in the building. So I used to live there without electricty.
Q: Joe Dibello was your partner when you started your restaurant.
A: No, no, no.
Q: Just a friend of mine. Joe Dibello got caught in the beer rackets when he was in GHQ. Selling beer tickets and all that. So after he got caught, he told me what happened. I figured out all the other angles.
And I went in that business. He already got hurt. And I went in. Course I got hurt too. It was a lot of fun.
Q: But Mogami said that he went into the restaurant with you and you kicked him out. And he was pissed off at you because of that. That’s what he told me. The very first restaurant.
A: But he knows more than I do. I can’t remember all those little things.
Q: You can’t remember whether or not Dibello was your partner or not?
A: Dibello was not my partner. Dibello helped me make the restaurant. And I used Joe to help me. And Joe wanted to be a partner or some shit like that, and I had to use his name…I was all con….But he took me to court to get 50% of the restaurant. And he wrote a paper than I only want to use my…you can use my name for so much money….something like that…his stupid lawyer brought the paper out, presented it to the court, I couldn’t help laughing. And Joe didn’t know the lawyer did that. And it says I’m only using your name, I’m not a partner. So he lost the court case. And Joe hated me ever since then.
Q: How did he help you set it up?
A: He had the the Original Joe’s in Yokohama….a restaurant in Yokohama. So he knew that the first thing on the menu was soup. The 2nd thing was salad. I was only interested in pizza. But he couldn’t make pizza.
Q: So you didn’t promise him that he could have part of the place.
A: No. He had no money involved. When he went to court, my office girl said that “Yes, Joe comes to the restaurant.” What does he do? She said, “He eats. He goes in the kitchen and he’s picking at all then food until Mr. Nicolas says stop it. You don’t own this place. You have no right to come here and eat food.” Pay for it.
(CLUB 88)
Q: Next question is very important. You told me that you and Riki and Machii used to go and trash places.
Place across the street from Nicolas was one. Club 88 or the Shanghai. You couldn’t remember what it was. And you went in and trashed it one night.
A: Oh yeah. That word trash, yes. Well, that happened because, again, Joe Dibello.
Q: That was the Club 88.
A: Club 88…. Joe Dibello came into Leon Greenberg’s law office. No, no…
That was Leo Prescott. Was it Leo Prescott …I guess it’s Leo Prescott had the club then. I think Leo Prescott had the club then. He was using Leon Greenberg as the lawyer. And then he heard something about me and Joe Dibello. And Leo Prescott told Joe Dibello. So when I got… it came back to me of course and I asked Leon who the hell was in the office and I looked at the book and Leo Prescott was in there. And I sez Ok, and I called Machii and Riki and said “Let’s make a typhoon.” And that was the end of the Club 88. Wrecked that fucking place. I think we did it two times then he moved down to Toranomon, I think.
Q: Club 88 was a place where you take off your shoes?
A: Club 88 over here where Sony Building is.
Q: Went there once.
A: Took off shoes?
Q: That’s what Japanese guy (veteran crime journalist)…said it was yashiki (parlor) type place where you take off your shoes. Lots of whores inside and prostitutes. And that the Club 88 was the first place in Japan where they served beer kobin, out of the bottles, because there was so much disease going on around them…and that they didn’t want these prostitutes drinking out of glasses, you wash a glass you mind not get it sanitized completely, so they sold beer in a bottle. & that there was shit going on in the back, you could play baccarat or poker, or illegal gambling going on. But it was a place where all the gaijin and people (blah)
A: They were open until 4 or 5 in the morning…..
Q: But you don’t remember
A: taking off shoes, no. That’s not true. Because, you came in the front door, and I remember you entered into what looked like a lobby. And they had a fireplace there. And then if you passed the fireplace room, the little section, then you went into the big club….You know who used to work in that place if you ever go down to Hong Kong, is Larry Allen. He’s a piano player. A black piano player. He’s playing in HK somewhere. He used to play the fucking piano…But if you took your shoes off, it certainly wasn’t in that front section.
Q: That’s the trouble. People remember things in different ways.
A: There was a club….There was no tatami…
Q: You remember The Last 20 Cent? (1960’s 70’s club)
A:. Yes. You take shoes off…it had a kotatsu, bar against the wall.But you know that guy now, he owns all the stores upstairs here. Kano….(BS)…
But you could see. They used to have such tremendous fights in the Club 88. Riki and Machii used to have fights over there, course they were just fucking around. I used to be the instigator. But anyway, they threw tables and chairs at each other. Break fucking Larry Allen’s piano. Break the back bar. You couldn’t walk around in your stockinged feet. Nobody could…
(EARLY YEARS)
(EARLY DAYS IN JAPAN)
Q: I asked you this before but you weren’t the first American in Japan.There were a bunch of other people who went to different places at the same time. Dispatched different groups.
A: When I came to Japan?
Q: Yeah.
A: No, …I came from Japan, I came from Okinawa to Omura Kyushu and, of course, I’m sure that they must have sent other Americans to different places. I was Air Base Command. In case something happened to me, I had to land in Kyushu. Of course, some people went to Atsugi and some went to Sendai and I imagine that they….
Q: They all dispatched in initial group.
A: Yeah, but you never know where they came from. Army. Navy. Marines. I went to Omura Kyushu. Marine base.
Q: Why was there a big grass mat there?
A: That was the air field. It was all grass.
Q: Because they couldn’t afford asphalt?
A: It’s good protection because grass is easier to replace than a concrete runway. And those airplanes were not big those days. Not like what you got today. Zero fight. 3 guys can pick it up and turn it over. Today you get an F-15, it must weigh 5-10,000 pounds for Christ sake….I don’t think one would fit in this room. Did you ever see those airplanes. Today’s airplanes? F-15, 16, 17….I don’t think they’d fit in those room. They’re big mother fuckers….10,000, 15,000 pounds.
Grass mat is easy to repair if you drop a bomb on it. You can repair it the same day.
Q: You said you were in Okinawa. Some Japanese put grenades in these boxes in the graveyards.
A: Yeah, you know …(draw picture), go in, little tunnel, dome shaped crest, in they got these little boxes 2 feet by 1 feet by 1 feet. And they put a cover on them And they put the bodies in there or the ashes in there. I know if you lift one up you might blow your brains out.
Q: Any guys get wiped out when you were there?
A: There was no boxing. There was no violence when I was there. There was no fighting. I left there probably, before the end of April. Now I think I stayed there only three or four days. Five days. So I must have left by April 5th or 6th.
Q: You were in Marine Corps in charge of investigations. What kind of investigation?
A: Fights. Rapes. Accidents off the base. The HQ squadron gets all the headaches.
Q: You get lots of fights?
A: I was walking down the street when a big fucking paratrooper wanted to fight with me. I told you that, right. Fucking, are you crazy. But, of course, if you…I knew one guy, Julie Sterns out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He wasn’t big but he was a hockey player. They picked on him. That son of a bitch would fight ten guys at one time.
Q: What’d the whorehouse in Scranton look like?
A: Nothing special…Separate house. 2 stories. All lined up. Victorian Style house. But they were all lined up. You could go in any one. You could go in any twenty of them probably. Well, I don’t think they’re still there. They could be.
Q: You get to chose the girl?
A: Yeah. Of course, in those days a girl was a girl. A girl is a girl is a girl. You choose anyone.
Q:You remember what she looked like?
A; No. I just didn’t care. Just a girl. Can you imagine first time? You remember your first time. You didn’t give a shit whether it was black, yellow, green, tall, fat, young, old. You didn ‘t care.
Q: All I could think about was I hoped to god I didn’t get her pregnant. That’s all I kept thinking about for a week afterward. 2 weeks.
Q: You said you started gambling then too? What kind of gambling, poker?
A: Well, we used to shoot crap, play poker. In the Marines, you learn everything…..we used to play poker all the time. We were not good poker players. And most of the time, …I remember we had an Italian guy there who was the victim. We used to cheat him all the time. We thought we were really smart kids. Deal from the bottom and the sides and every other place….
Pitch pennies. Pitch pennies against the wall. Shine shoes for a nickel.
(phone call from Frank Nomura. Discuss box to use karaoke microphone. Antenna in the dining room for the wireless)
Q: What was the smell in Omura like when you first went there?
A: (shrugs)
Q: How about the geisha house you went to. What did that smell like.
A: It smelled beautiful. For ten yen you could fuck all night. Can you imagine that.
Q: But no special smell. Fresh tatami, something like that. Nothing struck you?
A: No, they did a lot of charcoal grilling. Sweet potatoes and they had beer. They had mikan. That was a fair…everybody ate the same thing. …They had characoal, little one, the old one remember the old one, and they grill sweet potato. Plus it’s all they had.
You go there and you give them ten yen and you can fuck ten times a night if you want to. They didn’t care. And you eat and drink and …so you ate mikans and drank beer and ate sweet potatoes. But they were not mean vicious people or anything like that. They were just whores and one dick is just as good as another dick, I guess.
Q: When you were in Omuro, how long after you arrived, did the officers start coming in?
A: The American. Well, they came in…don’t forget, we’re aviation. Then they brought their F4U’s in. But they could ‘t fly much because there was no fuel. Rainy season, it was typhoon at that time. August. So there were very very few officers.
Q: Well, Tyrone Power came in. How long was it after that?
A: Oh, he came in probably a few days after I came in. But he came in. We made him the mailrun. So he come in, in and out, in and out. Nobody likes that fucking mail run, especially in August. It’s typhoon season. They didn’t have the electronics that they got today. I told you we had a guy named Hansen, who had 20-25 airplanes to his credit already. And he got lost in the ocean. Him and the whole squadron. They went from one island to another and they got lost….That’s history….Got lost ferrying airplanes from one island to another. Bad weather. Poor electronics. You name it. You know that’s 50 years ago. And you had to do a dot and dash to communicate…..Amelia Earhart got down in 1936-37. You talking 1942, not many years difference.
Q: You said there were snipers in the mountains in Yokosuka. Did you ever see anybody get shot?
A: No, but they used to shoot at us.
Q: You could hear the bullets?
A: Oh, yeah. They hit the vehicle. That was when we used to run from Yokosuka to …what was the name of that fucking town, it’s near Oppama, it used to be a whorehouse area. We used to go there shacking up. It’s Oppama. But it’s not Opama Station. It’s near Opama. We drive on that road down there between Opama and Yokosuka. You go different houses. Powered up.
Q: Whorehouses there?
A: Yeah. Of course. Sex was all over. Some people liked to go to concert halls. I preferred to go to a whorehouse.
Q: What were the whorehouses like there?
A: Japanese tatami places.
Q: Same as Omuro?
A: Yeah. All the same. Japanese whorehouses in those days were not fancy. They were plain tatami rooms? They didn’t have no red draperies.
Q: They actually shoot and hit the vehicle? This is hard top?
A: Carry all. Little ..carry all is a what. What do you call it, an open truck? Not the big, they call a big one Fallby, I think.
Q: Room for about 8 to 10 people on either side. 2 rows. 2 benches.
A: Right.
Q Canvas top.
A: Canvas top.
Q: So you actually hear the bullets hitting the side.
A: You know it’s dark. There’s nothing there. And if somebody shoots at you, you’re gonna know it. And we shoot back. We don’t give a fuck.
Q: Just open up fire?
A: You know if they fire once, it’s ok. If they fire twice, you’re gonna see the light. You’re gonna see the flash. Especially black of night.
Q: I got the list, all sorts of information on the Tosei-kai…there’s been a lot of stuff written in Japanese. Lots of magazine articles. When he opened up his TSK.CCC there was a list of directors, Jesus Christ. I mean all the top guys…from Mitsubishi, the guy who is now the president of the Yomiuri Shimbun, Tsuneo Watanabe is one of the directors. A famous author. People, so-called respectable people in society, were directors in Machii’s company. I got all the pamphlets and stuff from when they first opened up.
A: Life is sort of very interesting. Who would think you know that the Mitsubishi President would be a member of a crime group. A director at that. But maybe a lot of people had no choice but to say yes.
(phone call from Frank Nomura)
(WIVES & LOVERS)
Q: What’d your first wife look like? What kind of personality did she have?
A: Dull. Very dull.
Q: You mean quiet?
A: No disco baby. But she was…the attraction was, I told you, English. She was a doctor. She was nothing special. But in those days, nobody spoke English, so I had me somebody I could converse with.
Q: She didn’t like sex either.
A: I was sleeping the fucking enemy, not the wolves.
Q: She just married you because you were a foreigner and had money?
A: Well, they had no money in those days. There’s no, well, even today, I don’t think anyone can find passionate feelings among Japanese girls. I admit that they will fuck like a mink, but as far as offering would you say a warm relationship between male and female, I doubt it. Of course, there’s always the exception to the rule, but I would say out of a thousand, you might find one who might be passionately in love. But I doubt it, because the fucking propaganda in this country is so fucking anti-foreign, that nobody would expose themselves to the opposite of what they hear all day long.
Q: She used to get on the train at Taura?
A: Taura. The one station before Yokosuka.
(phone call from wife. You don’t have to be here. Just take it easy. Stay home)
A: She won’t come here. She knows you’re here.
Q: I’d forgotten about that.
Q: What’d your first wife look like?
A: Plumpy. 5’2″. They all are 5’2″ Round “maru” (round) face.
Q: She was introverted you would say?
A: An introvert. She still is.
Q: You just went up and talked to her on the train?
A: You see in those days we used to command the green car. What you call the green car. And if we seen girls, we let them come in …the fucking men, they’d have to ride shoulder to shoulder and ass to ass. So we controlled one car on the train. So we let her in on the train, talked to her, she spoke English, wow.
But I have to admit, I married her without feeling either. It was just somebody who spoke English. She wouldn’t come to Tokyo. She wouldn’t go to a GI club. She wouldn’t do anything. So,
A: Did you meet my pretty Indonesian girl here?
Q: No.
A: NO? My gosh. She’s pretty, yo. You like pretty girls?
Q: Like’em all. Especially the pretty ones.
A: She’s wondering if anybody knows the song Bali-hai.
Q: I know it….I thought everybody in the world knows that.
A: She’s asking. I said I know the song Balihai. She said, “you do?”
Q: So you just went up and talked to her.
A: Let her come in the train. And talked to her. And it worked. Like I said, the attraction was English. But I didn’t know she was a doctor…a dentist….She used the expression, which in those days was true, “I work in a dental office.” Because in those days the dental offices were not owned by the dentist, they were owned by somebody else.
And you know Bobby in those days if they could steal one stick of charcoal, they were happy. If they could figure out how to get charcoal and keep their house warm.
(meet Indonesian girl)
A: He said he knows Bali hai too….but then I gotta tell you the bad news. She’s living with a waiter. Good news to him. Bad news to me.
Q: Is the green car heated?
A: yes
Q: The whole train
A: Very hard to say. It might have been. Yokosuka line…..I used to live in Kamakura. In Okamoto hospital, near Buddha statue….That was one place. In those days you had to live like a rat. You had to find different places all the time. The MP’s were chasing you….They didn’t want you to stay overnight in a Japanese house..It was illegal….the military made those rules.
Q: Why?
A: To be son of a bitches like they are. Course the military top wheels they were free to do whatever they pleased. They lived in the Imperial Hotel.
Q: They think it was dangerous or something?
A: Just miliary regulation.
Q: There must have been some reason. Some logic behind it.
A: I don’t think the military ever has any logic….Well, they don’t want to lose troops. And if they’re shack rats….But that didn’t stop anybody. It stopped only the timid.
Q: What was your wife’s background? They doctors too?
A: They doctors too. Come from Mita.
(TAPE END)
(MISCELLANEOUS, GANGS, FAMILY LIFE)
Q: You said that when you got deported in 1950 and there was a guy here in GHQ who helped you, who took your name off the list. But you also said you went to your old neighborhood and you talked to some Mafia people and they said that they would help you. They could help get a ….What did they do exactly?
A: Well, the thing is at that time, the Italians were the power, see. So I had to get myself on the list to go to Japan. So I went and visit certain people. I want to go back to Japan. But those people were like you and me, like this, but you don’t know how powerful they are. They had a lot of power. So I said I want to go Japan. I gotta go back to Japan. I got a wife and 2 kids there.So I can’t remember who I spoke to. But, you know, it’s all family. So I had no trouble. I got a passport. A visa to go to Japan.
Q: Even though you were deported, they got you a passport back.
A: Yes. 5 weeks later I was back. 5 weeks, yo.
Q: When you’re deported, they take away you’re passport when you get back to the States, right?
A: I got another one. Well that time it was a military occupation.
Q: Did you have to pay for that?
A: No. Family friends. That’s why I’m pro-Mafia. But, of course, I’m not pro-selling dope. But it was a different type of people than they got today. But in those days money was not a very big deal.
Q: What’d you think of “The Godfather.”
A: I like #1. It was a cute story….but #2 was terrible. Wasn’t that the one where Pacino is smoking that shit/ (huh?)…Now I see they got #3. I was watching the Academy Awards the other day. I saw Goodfellas. I thought that was a nice movie, but to me it was not rated high, because there was too much fucking music in the back…
Q: How realistic were they?
A: Yeah, but you don’t see that in true life. I mean if they have a fight, like they did in The Godfather…Of course, they killed each other. But the families among themselves, they did that all the time….But, like I say, they don’t do it in the street. Or in front of anybody.
Q: When you first moved into Roppongi here and opened your store. There was the Russian Embassy, the American club hadn ‘t gone up yet, the Club 88. Hamburger Inn.
A: But Roppongi was not like you see it now. There was nothing. Nobody even thought about it. The place changed. Don’t forget it was 40,000 yen a tsubo. Big deal.
Q: Is the Tosei-kai running Roppongi now?
A: Now, no. I don’t think…let’s say it this way. The amount of money they make today, god only knows how, they can not extract it from a store. A restaurant. Nobody’s ever asked me for a penny here.
The Sumiyoshi group, they come here. They rent the whole room. They use the telephone like they going out of style. They never,…they pay all their bills. They don’t even entertain the idea of trying to beat you or say who were are, we’re gonna eat here free. They don’t do that….Years ago, the bums that Machii had and the other groups that we around, they used to shake down the places. But I never had that trouble. I’d laugh at them if they came over and tried to shake me down. Tell’em to grow up.
Q: They don’t shake down the night clubs now.
A: Nah. The mama-san in the night club might give them a free drink. 2 free drinks. But I don’t think she’d allow them to come in…like if you talk about Mama Cherry, forgettabout it. She wouldn’t let a gangster in. If he comes in, he’s got to keep his mouth shut. The same thing like I used to do.
Q: I thought the Inagawa-kai owned the Copacabana.
A: I don’t think so. They might have a good relationship. But…I don’t know about the Inagake-kai, but I had good relations with Nihon Promotions (Sumiyoshi, Kobayashi-kai), then Ginza Machii group. Bascially I was always with Machii. Nobody’s gonna try to go round and shake you down. It can’t be Machii’s group, they were the bosses around here…Now they make money. I was in the restaurant, the fucking Korean restaurant with my daughter in Azabu Juban, and these guys were sitting at the next table, I didn’t know what the hell to do. They were from Machii’s group. And they were sitting there splitting millions and millions of fucking yen amongst themselves. Jesus, that was about 3 or 4 years So they must have some kind of income. Where the fuck do they get all that kind of money?
You know it looks like the Tosei-kai is dead. But the Tosei-kai is not dead.
Q: I hear they’re into yakiniku restaurants, pachinko shops, a lot of legal businesses.
A: They do a lot of honest things, ….like this one guy, Watanabe, I don’t think you should use his name, I asked him one day to help me. And he says “I pay my lawyer 200 million yen.” Can you imagine that? 2-oku yen?
Of course, they cars and chauffeurs. What does he do for a living? He’s got a supermarket in the Koma Gekijo in Shinjuku…He’s talking about 200 million yen. I didn’t even want to talk no more. It’s crazy. He’s got other places in Shinjuku. Chinese restaurants. And all these kind of fucking things. They can’t make that kind of money. Although, the supermarket, I could understand could make some good money. Shinjuku. 24 hour supermarket. But he’s got one rule. No gangsters can go in there and buy anything.
The Tosei-kai used to be pretty strong in Shinjuku-san-chome. I think Shinjuku 2-chome was the whoring neighborhood. Now they’ve diversified….That’s right by the trolley car station. But that was a long time ago. 25-30 years ago. That was before the municipal office moved there. Trolley used to right on the main street, then by back alley.
I used to go there quite often. They were all bad boys.
Q: One guy was telling me how they make money now. They go to then department store and buy a plate of oysters for say 400 . Then they’ll take it to the club and they’ll sell it to the night club manager for 10,000 yen. The night club manager will divide it into two plates and sell each one for 6 or 7 thousand yen. And the customer will eat a tiny little plate of oysters. But they don’t care because it’s all on the company entertainment expense account. In this way the companies of Japan are supporting the gangsters of Japan.
A: They must have a tremendous source of income. I don’t know where the fuck it comes from.
Q: A lot of gangs here are into drugs now. I got a big file of stuff now.
A: You can buy drugs right down the street here.
Q: Yeah. Roa building. Gram of cocaine. It’s funny. Guy stands there selling it. But let somebody bring a bag of rice into the country, they’ll throw you in jail.
(TRADE-TRUMP)
Q: I gotta take off.
A: You heard part of my conversation to Russia today. See JT yesterday. Son of a bitch Morita. (Sony’s Akio Morita) I would like to answer him. But I need somebody like this to correct all my English, to make it concise or more powerful ….they wouldn’t let me print it….what’s I say…America can so. & just go write what he said. You know he’s a very slippery, sneaky bastard. & says that the J. are wrong in 1 point, then he starts bragging about how they’re right in 5 pts. If you, ….the way he wrote is I’ll throw him a bone then hit ‘em on the head with a hammer. & that’s way his article was written. I took him out and put it on my desk,..sex Jees I can really write against this son of a bitch….But he had 1 pt. Which was really correct & Americans should pay attention. He says “How can the American gov’t tell us that we should give 20% of our semi-computer business?///, when the American gov’t ask them to give the businessman something/// but why doesn’t the American gov’t tell the American businessman to do it…..he’s trying to say the American answer that our system is free trade (is hypocritcal) ….Americans say we don’t do managed trade(when in fact they do, asking for 20% share of semi-conductor market)…That’s mixing private business with gov’t. He had a small point there. That was good. Today you read anything in the J. Times…As long as you say Japan is right, they’ll put it in…
I write something critical, they will say I’m just a crackpot. Throw that fucker out.
(blah, blah, blah.)
But America can say no …..today in JT they tried to harp on this bullshit that Japan is more of an enemy than Russia. ….So man in the street. He’s gonna rise.
(Talk about Penthouse Article. Talked to Bruce Scott at Harvard…Scott said “It’s all over. The U.S. banking system is entirely dependent on Japan. We’re vassals of the Bank of Japan.”
A: Yes, but it’s not really over. The American public has not been pushed hard enough as to what’s really happening…Like me I always dreamed that when I got enough money, I’d spend it on anti-Japanese stories. Hire anybody to write. Put it in the paper. “Send me your anti-Japanese stories. I get them published….There’d be plenty of contributors. But see J. not gonna win. Not gonna beat Americans.
Q: For the next ten years they going to be running things. It’ll take that long for the US to turn it around. (HA!)
A: I don’t think Uncle Sam will turn it around that way.
Q: They gonna have to change educational system.
A: My ideas are good but they have to be reworked by proper people. Or professionals in each category…..I was thinking of writing to Don Trump. Paul Harvey said Don Trump said J. Koreans, Chinese coming in buying up our country with our money. Way he said it he really emphasized in favor of Trump said. Same as H. Cossell, he writes against Pete Rose, every chance he get.. (blah, blah)
Trump….you can’t beat him…keep away from him…get him angry you in trouble, J. trying to buy Trump Towers.
You know I told you my crazy idea about how to destroy the J. trade balance? Bring American stores. Trump could do it. He got plenty of money. He can buy anything he wants. Can force the market to accept his products. But then J. will spend just as much money as he’s got ton tell people don’t buy from that store.
Q: I told Ezra Vogel your idea about the cars, Lower dollar to 50 yen etc, West can sell cheap Benzes & Cadillacs. He said that would last for a few months and then the J. would be making Cadillacs and Benzes. They’d just copy it and make it cheaper.
A: That’s good for the people. But the Japanese.are not going to do anything for the people. & never will. Bullshit. I’d like to see them try to make a Cadillac, or lower their price. They have to lower their price on their Toyota’;s. but if you know a J. he will never ever change that name Toyota. No way. Fight with it forever. Cuz when they throw a chip in the water they don’t ever expect that chip to come back. They will do like I said. They will have to lower their prices. & if they lower their prices to compete with the American car, how do they prevent the car from coming in Japan. They just go to GM & say we want to be agent of your car. Who’s GM got as an agent? They got Yanase. Do you know how much money Yanase owes? He’s broke. He owes a tremendous amount of fucking money. And the reason why this guy is there is becuz he owes money. But if he was a rich prosperous organization, how many Cadillacs would there be in Japan? I would push the Cadillacs. You don’t have to ask for ten million yen for a Cadillac.
You can say 3 million yen for a Cadillac. But they only way Yanase can stay in business, he has to have the blessing of the Japanese. And the Japanese say “Keep your fucking price up. Whatever you lose, don’t worry about it. Keep your price up.” Because you’re dealing with Japan incorporated.
Why doesn’t America bring in an American organization to sell Cadillacs. Shit. There’d be no more Japan here.
Q: You read “Trading Places” by Clyde Prestowitz.
A: Didn’t I see the movie?
Q: No. (Explanation of book and intro of Clyde Prestowitz follows) (Japan require each individual metal bat imported from U.S.. Takes forever. But no “restrictions”
(Another Zappetti rant follows. About Yamada, inventor of cure for color blindness. Has three Benz’s.) Long time friend. Wada says, ‘I’m not Yamada from Tokyo.I’m not Yamada Japan.” I say “Who the fuck are you?” He sez “I’m Yamada of the world.”
And here I read this fucking thing that Morita put it. He says Morita’s from the world.
Q: Which is why Nissan sets up factory in Tennessee and then sets up own spare parts factory, eschewing American parts factories. And when they moved their site from one place to another in the state, they used a mover.
A: The same thing when a Japanese buys a ticket to fly to the Hawaii, he flies a Japanese airline. He rides a Japanese bus. He stays at a Japanese hotel. He eats Japanese food. And then he sez, I been to America. Shit. But if the American don’t wake up. And I think that the, you see today, they’re too many people, whose problem is what, abortion. Well, I don’t know. I believe in women’s rights. I believe that everybody has a right to do what the fuck they please. It’s their body. I don’t know all the details involved. But this is gonna be the big issue. But one of these days the issues gonna be the trade balance. And you know this guy Morita is saying, “You know you people are looking at the trade balance from a consumer point of view. You don ‘t realize that we buy a lot of services from America.. And this not right. You’re not counting this.” You know. He can get away with it. Because Nick Zappetti can’t argue against that. I don’t know if it’s true or not. So he’s got all this bullshit there. But you read this column and you can come up with more hate than you can imagine. And the opening line is “I did not appreciate that somebody translated my book in Japanese into English and sent it to Washington D.C. without my approval. He’s saying w/o my approval they translated the book into English. You believe that? You can’t do that right?
Q: Well, you can’t sell it. Well, no you can’t. It’s copyrighted. But shit the Japanese do it all the time.
A: They do it all the time. But that’s the opening line. Boy you could tell where his hard-on was.
(End Taping)
Tokyo Junkie 
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