(TAPE 7) Nicola Interview October 6, 1989
(Includes: U.S.-Japan Relations/Trade, U.S.-Japan Relations/ Marriage, Business Bribes and Gifts, Dope Deal/Nepal Ambassador’s Son, Sumo & Other Fixed Matches, Alpha 66/FBI/Pizza & Pieces, J. Citizenship, Lawyer Suit)
SIDE A
(Counter 000)
(U.S.-JAPAN RELATIONS: TRADE)
A: People forgot what Admiral Yamamoto said. You woke up a Sleeping Lion. And if this keeps up, they’re gonna wake up that America public. And they’ll find out that the guy that beat the Japanese in the war was not the man in Washington D.C. but the kid from Idaho. And that’s gonna happen again. The American young man, the GI, he’s gonna do it.
(Talking about writing vitriolic letter to the Japan Times over some anti-American trade article)
See, I’m in a good position because I can sign my name N. Koizumi. Although there are very few Japanese who can sign their name with an N. Of course, those guys in the Japan Times, they know who N. Koizumi is.
Q: What’s the J. Times thing say?
A: It’s a whole war. It’s disinformation. Propaganda thing. Just foolish to even answer the fucking thing. Just ignore it.
Q: What’s disinformation about it?
A: You know, that many companies go to the States and buy assets and this that and the other thing…..MGM was bought by a British firm or something?
Q: So what’s the argument to that?
A: I can’t answer your question. I haven’t paid that close attention to it.
Q: It’s only the Japanese are are attacked when American sells a piece of its soul. Gov’t official says that nobody says that when European or British companies buy into big American companies.
A: They ought to find out how many British are on the American lobby list.
That wouldn’t hurt them. Another thing, if they want to find out how their popularity is in Japan, like that, in America, they don’t have to ask…Gallup poll, the most prestigious poll there is, right? Ask the guy that was in Japan, what does he think about Japan. Don’t ask a kid, or a fucking lobbyist that’s getting money from Japan. Don’t ask the guys in the State Department. Ask the guy that used to be in Japan. Then you’ll find out what the Americans think of Japan. Ask the guy who was kicked out of the country because he can’t stand the kitchen; it’s too hot. How many Americans are here? You can count them on your finger, you know? They got 50,000 Japanese in New York City?
I guess they’ll say that helps the American economy. Why don’t they hire 50,000 Americans to represent themselves? Instead of bringing their own Japanese over there. Don’t they know that causes a shortage of fish heads.
Q: I understand they’re having a hard time getting lobbyists these days. Lobbyists are meeting a lot of resistance in Washington D.C. All you gotta do is publish a list of the Japanese lobbyists. Jesus Christ. You know what these guys’ll do? They’ll buy the fucking newspaper to keep their names out of it. They’ll ask the Japanese to help them. You see the guy that they had….he had a queer fucking roommate or housemate…who was the one who was here?
Q:Oh, Craig Spence.
A: I think I even met him.
Q: I met him too. Everybody’s met him once. No, I think that man in the streets…You see ,we worried about the Russians, but now the Russians are saying, ok, so. Let’s all become family members. But Japanese are not asking anybody to be their family members. They’re asking everybody to be their servants. You work for me. They’re gonna find out that they’re harboring a horde of…what do you call them a nest of bees? A hornet’s nest? They think that they American can fall in line and say “yes, sir” like they do in the Orient. Shit.
Like I told you, the word “Gametsui”—Japanese will teach the Americans what the word “Gametsui” is. Then they’ll find out that the labor will ask for more money. More this. More that. They think they defeated the unions? Bullshit. To bad we ain’t got thei (garbled).
Actually you can’t tell what the newspapers write because they want to make controversy. They want make controversy. They don’t report the real facts. They report…you wanna say something against that guy? Yeah. Then he answers back and then. You know, you’re selling newspapers. It’s the same thing like I asked this guy, Honda, who works at the J. Times, “Why did you write that bullshit story about the Italian Gardens.” He says, “Hey, that’s an advertisement. We make money.” I saez, “We never read advertisements. “ And if the people in the J. Times don’t read advertisements why do they read Readers in Council? That’s another form of advertising. All the disinformation and all that shit. That the Japanese like the Americans. And the Americans like the Japanese and they trust them. Hey, that’s a lot of shit. Go to Hawaii and ask the man on the street what he thinks of the Japanese. And he’ll tell you: “Get Out!~”
Don’t go to fucking Arkansas where there ‘s no….you know.
But you know they get in their head because there’s always something else disturbing the America. If it ain’t the fucking Hurricane Hugo, it’s the narcotics thing, it’s this. One of these days all these things will be put in the proper shelf and they will attack Japan. And when they attack Japan, they’ll do what they did in WWII. They’ll tear it apart. Anyway, that’s what I hope.
But you know, today’s kids, they have fathers like me.And I’m 70. My kids are 40. 20 to 40 if you want to say it. And they have kids and they hear their father talk about the fucking Japanese. And that’s imbedded in their minds. But they’re too old, yet. But when the get a little old and they get in the right position, they will remember what their father said. And they will be able to see through clearer eyes, what the truth is.And I think that new generation, it’s the same thing this guy, this fucking Russian spy told me, wait until they get rid of the old fogies in the Kremlin. Then you see Russia change its ways. And that’s happening. And now, like you said, the lobbyists are hiding. And eventually, the lobbyist has to justify himself. And he had to make statements that will be classified as anti-Japanese in the form of “we are not competitive enough.” And it’s anti-Japanese when they say “our children don’t go to school and learn.” These are all anti-Japanese statements, because if our kids went to school and learned, we don’t need Japanese.They don’t see it from that point of view. But that’s what it really amounts to. Technology? Japan is a second rate fucking electronic country. All they can make is refrigerators and washing machines. They can’t make rockets. They can’t go to the moon. What makes them so proud? They steal IBM secrets. They can’t do nothing without American technology. And they exploit it.
(U.S.-JAPAN:MARRIAGE)
And, you know, if you look at me, I’m anti-Japanese, I told you, because my wife is such a fucking bitch. I wonder how many more Americans with Japanese wives think that way. The ones that got guts to stand up on their own feet and speak. Many of them can’t make a statement…their wives support them. I know quite a few Japanese girls married to Americans. But then like I said before. The reason a Japanese woman marries an American is she wants to dominate him. She can marry a Japanese and be dominated. She can marry an American or foreigner and dominate.
Do you have that problem at home?
Q: No.
A: No. Or a little bit?
Q: No, my wife’s different. She’s like an American. She goes to work for the UN. She’s got her own routine. She doesn’t want kids. She wants to have a career in the UN and she’s traveled all over the place.
A: uh-uh. How do you want me to interpret it? How do I interpret it?
Q: Our thing. With her?
A: She’s again. Same like my wife. They’re out for themselves. And only themselves. And they’ll always be that way. It’s not nice to talk about you and me, but…it could be interpreted that way.
Q: You could say that about anybody. We lived together for a long time before she got this offer from the UN. I used to go out and get drunk every night. Raised hell.
A: She knew you then. She knew what type you were.
Q: She put up with a lot of bullshit from me. And she got this offer and she just said, “What should I do?” And I’m the one that said “Go ahead and take it.” I’m the one who wanted to go travel in Africa and Europe.
A: Yeah. It’s good. It’s a funny type of thing. You also said that she don’t want children. She wants to advance her own career.
Q: I don’t want kids either. It’s good for me. It suits me.
A: Nahhh. That’s today. It won’t suit you forever. Kids are the most valuable thing that anybody can have. If they’re good kids. Because you see you can remake your children in the image that you’ve failed to make yourself. And 90% of the people that have children, want their children to grow up this way, so that the woman that tried to be a movie star fails. She gets a kid and she wants the kid to be a movie star. Life begets life. Anyway.
But, that’s Japan. No, I think the Japanese are mean vicious son-of-a-bitch bastards. But I can tell you my wife is a very nice person, she’s very diligent. She’s this. She’s that. As long as I offer no argument. I take the shit that I get. Hey, she’s a hell of a nice woman. But as soon as I open my mouth and say something. Shit, you never hear the end of it. I’m trying to run a business here. I told you I’m going crazy now. You know I went yesterday to a furniture store and I saw a beautiful fucking furniture. 5 million yen. See. And she says “Buy it.” She says, “Buy it. I’ll get the money. Don’t worry about the money.” And today she’s calling up a loan company to borrow the money to pay for it. I say “Why do you do that?” Why don’t you go to the bank. It’s only 5% a year. Don’t fool around with this Orix..Oriental Financing.” She says, “My company. We always have to support your company.”
Yeah?
I gave her everything. And now it’s her company supporting my company. And I don’t like to drive the car anymore. And everytime I’m in the car you’re badgering me about this, that and the other thing….you don’t have to…
(BUSINESS BRIBES & GIFTS)
Tokyu people coming around. You gotta bribe them See. So my wife bribed the guy. And they want Xmas pizza. They want pizza made with crushed pineapple. And a little bit of cherries on it. You know, colorful thing for Xmas for the kids. Fresh pizza. Freshly baked pizza. OK, so she goes to this jerk here. And she’s gonna make pizza. She told this Maruyama (ass’t GM at Nicola’s), this first class jerk that cost me about almost 400,000 yen a month salary. That’s a lot of money when you don’t get your money’s worth. It ain’t a lot of money when you don’t get your money’s worth. So he makes a pizza, and he puts whole pineapples on it. You know the slice? How the fuck can you eat a pizza where the pineapple has got more consistency than the pizza. What’s easier to bite? Cheese? Or a fucking pineapple. And she’s raising hell. I say, ‘Yae-chan, fire the guy. I been telling you that for months.” He causes arguments between me and my wife. But she will just not remove the person that makes the arguments. So she went the 3 and a half hours to meet this guy, to go to his family house, and bring them 60,000 yen worth of gift certificates. Can you imagine that? What kind of money is that? I don ‘t even count that. It’s in my pocket, I tell her I’m broke.I don’t even think that’s money. She went all the way out to Minami-Rinkan to pay off this cocksucker, and he gets 30,000 and his assistant get 30,000 and this kid that’s sitting out there had a meeting with them, they flipped. “Oh, yes sir. We’re going to do what we can.” Oh you should hear the fucking attitude. Now they want more products from us and put them in the Tokyu Stores. For fucking 60,000 yen. What the hell kind of….I says “Yae-chan…” She says, “He lives in a beautiful home. He lives in the Tokyu area. Tokyu owns the whole area.”
She says, “Don’t think 30,000 and 60,000 is little money. These guys got hundreds and hundreds of suppliers. So when you start multiplying them by 100’s, you’re talking money.:
Q: They specify figures?
A: No. I’m gonna go to Osaka on Monday. And I’m not gonna come back until Wednesday. They’re telling you the days you’re not gonna be home. So there’s no embarrassment. You go to the home. And you do it on Tuesday. So we can have a meeting on Wednesday. You know. They point blank say “This is what I want on this date.”
Q: They didn’t say 60 grand, did they?
A: No, they leave it to you. You’re talking about millions of yen a month business. Anything you give them they’re gonna take. And you can tell whether it was the right figure or the wrong figure by the next day. If they give you a sneer, then you have to go back and grease their palm again. But then every buyer in every store does the same thing. But there was one man, he’s still there, Tokyu Stores, Mr. Senbe. He wouldn’t even take a fucking cookie. Now he’s the man I dealt with. So, some people. And the boss of Tokyu Stores, Mr. Uto, I wouldn’t write his name if I were you, Mr. Uto, he lives right here, his home is full of, they got a whole warehouse full of stuff they received from people. Imagine that? A whole warehouse. He’s the boss of Tokyu Stores. If you don’t think he gets money, hey baby. He’s the president of Tokyu Stores. His wife and my wife are friends. They play golf together. She’s such a good golfer that she can get on the green in 6 and she’ll say 3. You know the difference?
Q: No.
A: When you play golf, you generally say how much you’re on in before you start putting. She gets on in 6, she says 3. You know. If she gets 3 putts, she’ll say 2. But that’s because they live with corruption. They live with this “Okozukai”(pocket money), they’re getting all these things. So they think that their whole life is one fucking false story. Japanese always do that.
I hired Mr. Rokamoto, president of Kawasaki Bussan, Kawasaki Steamship Company. He was an employee of mine. And his salary was peanuts. And I gave him 100,000 yen a month and he was so grateful. He says, “Oh, you’d be surprised the income I have other than salary.” I sez “What?” He says, “I have a car. I have a house. I have an expense account. I can do anything I want to the millions and millions of yen per month, I don’t even look at my salary. I don’t care what my salary is.” Imagine that? The president of Kawasaki Bussan worked for me.
Q: What did he do for you?
A: He was my advisor. He told me how to do things in Japan. You can do this. And he had a lot of influence. He knows a lot of people. He can open the door for me any time.
Q: When’d you hire him?
A: I hired him back in Showa 45 (1970). I was looking for a joint venture. So I needed a man of his caliber to make a joint venture with the top companies. And, of course, I met Mitsubishi. That didn’t work. I met Aji No Moto. That didn’t work. And I met Nippon Taxi and that didn’t work. And then when I got up against the wall, I had to go to Nippon Taxi because that’s his relative. And I proceeded to get fucked. Which is normal for an foreigner in Japan. And pretty soon the American in the United States is going to get fucked by the Japanese foreigner.
You see they would not import foreign labor because they do not feel that they need foreign labor.
Q: How’d you get fucked by this guy. That another story you didn’t tell me?
A: That’s a big story. You get to that one you gonna find how much I got cheated. That’s the way they took my restaurant. My land. My building. My name. My trademark. Hey, you believe it.
Q: We all went through all that.
A: Well, that’s the guy that introduced me.
Q: He introduced you to the head of the Nihon Kotsu guy.
A: Today, it came up in court again. Yeah. I had something that some Japanese wanted. And they’ll make sure…now here’s…you name it….Why would the president of Kawasaki Bussan work for a small fucking American? A nobody. Why would he lower his status? Why would this guy come and work for me? Remember when I told you the Japanese have got “long eyes?” Of course, now, I look back and I say, “What a plant.” The president of Kawasaki Bussan, the president of Kawasaki Steamship company, works for Nicolas Enterprise Company. Fucking company that makes what 300 million yen a year income? And he was working for a company that makes 3,000 million yen a year daily. So can we classify him as a mold? How would you call him?
It was very interesting. I made a contract with him in August and, his last salary was end of September.
Q: He withdrew?
A: He did what he was supposed to do. He lured me into their bullshit. I signed a contract August 6. And at the end of September, he quit. But then hindsight is so much better than foresight. Or should we say it the other way. Foreskin is the real thing. The guy that loses his foreskin collects all the money. That’s a fucking Jew. No, of course not. All right, let’s go back to what you want to talk about.
(DOPE DEAL: NEPAL AMBASSADOR’S SON)
Q: You were going to tell me about this dope deal with the Nepal Ambassador’s son. That’s a good story.
A: That’s a dangerous story. Anyway, I was approached by the Nepal Ambassador’s son to help him sell narcotics. White powder. Could be anything, Coacaine. Heroin.I don’t know what the hell it was. And I decided to put him in jail. …He was a customer. He used to come to the restaurant. And everybody thinks I’m the Mafia. The man who could pull all the crime strings, you know. Shit. I couldn’t even get somebody to break your arm. So, of course, I ignored him in the beginning. But he insisted. He insisted. And then he asked me to come to his house and I went to his house and I saw what he was talking about. But, of course, I don’t test it. So I tried to make a trap. I had him bring the stuff to the New Japan Hotel. Or something. And I had a couple of gangsters come to the New Japan Hotel. Then I had a couple of so-called policeman catch them in the act and put them all in jail.
Q: Why’d you have the gangsters go? To buy the stuff?
A: They knew all about it. I couldn’t figure how they knew. Why would I be in the middle?
Q: You set up a meeting at the Hotel New Japan with this Nepal guy?
A: Yeah. I set up the meeting. And 2 gangsters. These are the guys who are going to do the buy. The other guys are going to do the sell. And I was supposed to be the middleman. Watch them, you know. But anyway, something went wrong. Nobody showed up. I went there. Something went wrong. And I just let it go at that. And then I called up a gangster friend of mine and said, “What happened?” And he said, “Well, nobody believed it.” So, OK, I set it up again. Because now I’m working one gang against the other. And this guy tells the right man in the police station, this gangster on my side of the fence, not the buyer. And I’m sitting in my restaurant here. This one here. And the guy calls me up and he wants to meet me, downstairs. And I met him downstairs. And he’s supposed to be the gangster that’s gonna buy it. But he had policeman written all over him. All over him. He reached his hand out to shake hands, which gangsters don’t do. And when you shook hands with him, the man was physically fit. Gangsters are not physically fit….Not those kind of gangsters. They’re not strong arm.
So I met the man and I went across the street to the Donc coffee shop. And to impress me, he pulled out a stack of money what he said was a million yen, and it was like freshly pressed money. You know about a half-inch in height. So , I’m looking and I’m thinking, Jesus Christ, there’s something wrong here. Then he’s got a ….he’s wired for a microphone. He’s got the lapel microphone receiver. You know?
So in English I said, “I know that you’re not a buyer. Therefore I advise you not to touch the ambassador’s son because you can not hurt him. He’s the ambassador’s son. But to try to find the source where the stuff came from and attack it at the source. These boys are only runners. They are not dealers. And it was very clear. And, of course, he didn’t understand English….So, in the tape, I said, “Make sure you understand what I’m saying. Don’t do anything stupid.”
So he says “OK. Ikimashoo(let’s go).And I took him to the place where these kids were living. The ambassador’s son and his servant. And I introduced him as the buyer. Knowing that he’s not a buyer…..
Q: You took him to the embassy?
A: I took him to the kid’s home. Azabu-Juban. And they were not looking to sell it in Japan. They were looking for a route to the United States. So then I took this guy there. And they said to him, “We have no intention of selling this stuff in Japan.” And hen said, “I have no intention of selling it in Japan, either.” I couldn’t help but laugh. He’s a policeman. He’s not gonna sell it in Japan. Any dope can see that he’s in the narcotics section. Anyway, I says, ok, I’m leaving. And I left. And about a second later, he left. And when I left I started getting followed by the other policeman. So, I shook off the policeman. And went into the New Otani Hotel and took a room there. Under a fictitious name. So I called the gangster from the hotel and I said, “What the hell did you do?” He sez, “I didn’t send anybody. I don’t know anything about it.”
So now I was high, wide and stranded. Whichever way you say it. So then I start calling my other friends to make some sort of approach to the police station to get me out of the mess that I was in. In the meantime, the ambassador’s son got arrested. His servant got arrested. And they were looking for a furyo gaijin. (strange foreigner)…You know what that means….And here I am trying to figure out how to get out of the mess that I’m in. So eventually a meeting was set up with the police. And I exonerated myself.
But they wanted me to go to court against the ambassador’s son. Of course, I had to do it. So from that day on and any day in the future, you’re never gonna catch me in Nepal.
Q: You had to go to court to testify against them?
A: Yeah, I had to say what my position was. My object was and what I was trying to do. And that it was a comedy of errors.
Q: What happened to the guy?
A: They just deported him. Nothing happened. That was a long time ago.
Q: What year was that?
A: Oh shit that could be 15 years ago?
Q: 1974. The way the world runs.
A: You know if they’d a listened to me, they’d a played the game, they could have got the source in Hong Kong or Thailand or wherever it came from.
Q: You said you wanted to set a trap for them in the beginning.
A: Yeah. It didn’t work. They thought I was involved in the sale. Shit. ….I wanted them to catch the kids in such a way that they would work their way with the kids. So the kids will say they got it from so&so. & they’re gonna go there and make their own buys. & things like that. Because they’re only couriers. So they coulda said they got it from so-so. Pay off the kids. Instead, they used the sledgehammer tactics, which is by the way a Japanese style. When they get in the driver’s seat, believe me, they use a baseball bat. They used the sledgehammer. They don’t use finesse. I was was trying to catch dope dealers in Japan. I was trying to catch the guy that sent the stuff up from S.E. Asia. Tried to catch them both at the same time, but like I said, it was the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Every fucking thing went wrong.
Q: They don’t know how to disguise themselves?
A: No technique. They don’t watch television shows, that’s why. If they watch “Harskey and Slutch., and Wiseguy and the other ones they’ll find out how to do their jobs in an efficient manner. But even in Japan if they catch you with narcotics or you’re a user, they don’t do anything to you. Remember that singer, Naoko, the skinny fucking thing. She got caught. She let her go. They don’t prosecute. They’re their own people. Japanese. They don’t prosecute their own people. But if there was a gaijin involved, I believe you me that that gaijin would have got 100 years in jail.
A: Did I tell you what happened to me last week. I grossed 88,000 yen in one day. And then on Thursday I grossed 512,000. How in the hell can you run a fucking business that jumps like that. God Damn It.
(SUMO & OTHER FIXED MATCHES)
Q: You were talking about sumo wrestlers.
A: Mr. Edo. Course that’s their first name when they play in the first lower level.
(irrelevant discussion)…This guy was way down at the bottom. And every time this guy wins, I used to give him ichi-mon yen (10,000 yen), which in those days was a lot of money. That could have been 1965-66. That would be 23 years ago. Then he had 6 wins in a row. And he used to come to my restaurant everynight when he won. And I’d give him the cash. And I’d treat him to steaks and pizzas. Spaghetti. And believe me those guys can eat. They can devastate a table for four people. Then when he won his sixth bout, with a 6-0 record, he was told he had to lose. But you see he’s a different kind of Japanese. He just spoke straight out and said to me what his position was. Most Japanese would not say that.
Q: Why’d you give him 10,000 yen everytime he won?
A: Well, it was Okuzukai (pocket money). I gave him that and I fed him.
Q: Why’d you do that?
A: Oh, I like sports. I like the little guy. I like the guy on the bottom. It would be nice if I could help somebody get on top. I always done that. I always go for the little guy. I don’t care about the winner. I care about the loser. I try to make the loser a winner. After all, didn’t my education start on December 7, 1941?
Ok. He won 6. On the 7th day he came around and said he has to lose the next time. So I sez, if you lose, don’t come back here no more. And he lost. And he never came back. And that was the end of him. But his name was Edo. That’s easy to trace. Because Tokyo is Edo. He was a big guy, yo.
Q: How big? What was he like?
A: He was about 6’4”. He weighed about 150 kilograms. He was no small guy. He coulda went up to the top if he’d a listened to the stupid “yaocho” and shit. You know what “yaocho” means, right.
Q: Yeah. (Fix)
A: And it’s all in all the sports here. Yaocho. Yaocho. Yaocho. They don’t play here for individual merit, you know. It what you call “WA” (harmony). Team spirit. Sports spirit. Company spirit. You can put that word spirit in almost everything the Japanese do. Organizational spirit.
(Discussion of baseball. NL Playoffs. Cubs vs. SF Giants.)
Q: You know I heard the Daiei Hawks offered Tony Bernazzard a bonus if he controlled his temper. If he would stop losing it. I couldn’t believe that.
A: Like I said. You can throw a beanball at them, but they have the right to defend themselves. They don’t like that here.Yesterday, who was it, Upshaw ran after a guy.
Q: What were you saying about the sumo wrestlers’ sex life.
A: Well, that’s what I heard now. I heard they can’t reach their butt. And if they look down they don’t see their pecker either.
Q: You mean they can’t wipe their ass?
A: They can’t wipe their ass. They can’t reach that far back.
Q: So they have to have somebody to do it for them.
A: Yeah. The low boys.
Q: Jesus.
A: The rest they have a new Japanese bathroom where the hot water comes out. What do you call it? E-I-g-e-t or something? Of course that’s probably a scientific fact that a man with short arms and a big body ain’t gonna reach back there. Their grith (girth) is something terrible.
Q: And they can’t screw normally.
A: Oh, hell, it’s impossible. Listen, you put a girl on the bottom and you put 400 pounds on her, what is she gonna do? She gonna react to what? The weight? Or the pecker? She’ll react to the weight. So it’s surprising they have children. Of course, almost all the children are born after they get out of it. If they get out of that thing.
Q: So how do they do it? She lays down on the table?
A:I think they fuck in a T-position. Like you say “Time Out.”
Q: You see Konishiki’s wife or his bride-to-be? (note: Konishiki is 500 lb. Hawaiian sumo wrestler)
A: That ugly fucking broad that he brought up to Tokyo one time.
Q: From Sapporo?
A: Huh?
Q: She’s a fashion model. A 21-year old model. From Sapporo.
A: That ain’t the same one he brought from Hawaii?
Q: No.
A: He brought something from Hawaii that Jesus Christ if she didn’t look like the whore that somebody was watchin’
Q: Where’d you see her?
A: The airport. Television cameras on her. Boy she was shy and ran away. And I swear to god, I don’t know where he picked the dog up, but she was a dog.
Q: Well, this girl was really cute. She’s about 4’11”and 85 pounds.
A: Well, I’m sure it’s love at first bank sight. What else would they look for?
Q: You were going to tell me a story about Flash Elorde (Filipino boxing champ). Is that it? And how Toyota started? And Nick Photiadis. Make any sense to you?
A: Yeah. Flash Elorde. His brother-in-law was Lope Surreal. Flash Elorde was the Phillipine lightweight champion. Or something in that category. And his father-law- Lope Surreal was his manager. Of course, Lope brought many fighters up to Japan. And occasionally, he would say to me, “Don’t bet on my boy. He’s gonna lose.”
Q: Is he still alive?
A: Lope’s dead. Elrode might be still alive.
Q: Elorde lost one really controversial fight in Japan, as I recall. Was that yaocho (fixed)?
A: Probably. Well you’re not gonna come to Japan and take anything away from them They don’t tolerate that. They’ll pay for anything. They’ll buy any title. They’ll do anything they can.
But the White Sox had a big scandal, right? I imagine the Japanese, nobody says anything. They must have done that 100 times.
Q: Yeah, they got …a pitcher named Ogawa won 30 games for the Dragons back in the 60’s.1969, they got 4 guys banned for life. They were caught fixing games. They took money. You know they used to say it cost 500,000 yen to bribe a ball player. And you needed 4 guys on a team to do it, to affect the game. They say it still goes on today, but they’ll do it mostly in Osaka, in Pacific League games, in the lower half, where it won’t affect the pennant race, because two many people are watching.
A: They don’t care. I don’t think the pennant race means that much to them because what do they get? Remember Dick Davis, on the Kintetsu Buffaloes, the center fielder, the one that got caught with the narcotic shit. He says, “What do I want to win for?” He said, “It costs me more money to stay here than the World Series money if you win.” They don’t give them any money for playing a 7-game series between the Central and Pacific League. He didn’t want his team to win. “I’d rather go home to my wife.” And I guess too many people heard him say that because the next year they screwed him up with that narcotics shit.
Q: Oh, you know about that?
A: Oh, yeah. Of course, I told you. It affected me. Because they wrote in the paper that these guys always meet in Nicola’s restaurant in Roppongi. And that was the same time I was in Hawaii, and my medicine packages were opened. I told you that story….They said Nicolas was the place where they congregated…That shithead I was talking about was Marty Kuehnert….He was the one they voted shithead of the year. I think the first one was Cromartie.
(Call from Mogami)
A:…Oh, I think I did all right….He represented himself….When you free again, etc….See you Tuesday…Tuesday is Toka (10th) OK when are you off near that day. Getsuyobi, Suiyobi. Dochi? Mukuyobi….ok)
That was the CIA interpreter. How did you do in court today.
A; Yeah, that was Davis. They caught him with the paraphanelia for marijuana. They put it in the papers. I guess they arrested him. And that was the end of his career in Japan. And they wrote in the Japanese paper that these guys congregate in Nicola’s restaurant in Roppongi. And yet I never seen one smoke a cigarette or do anything that would indicate that they’re in that category. You know Bass. You know all of them. They’re not the type. I don’t know what they do off season, but I doubt very much….Maybe they have to have it to run around the ballpark 17,000 times a day.
Q: You ever smoke marijuana?
A: no.
Q: It just makes you sleepy. Dizzy and sleepy. It slows you down.
A: Coke.
Q: Coke is just the opposite. It gives you the feeling of speeding up if you had more energy. Actually, it has the opposite effect…ultimately.
A: Opium is nothing but a tranquilizer, isn’t it?
Q: I guess.
A: I guess marijuana.
Q: Marijuana is like opium
A: It’s a tranquilizer.
Q: But cocaine, you know that ballplayer Tim Raines, he played the whole season on cocaine. He’d come to the ballpark. His eyes are red. He’d miss balls. Misjudge fly balls.
A: You see that game the other night the Giants won? Playing Hiroshima. Guy misjudged the ball in the outfield. Nagashima. How could they miss a ball like that? And how, why would the manager, ask the centerfielder to step inside when Hara is up, a potential long ball hitter. So to me, that’s yaocho. Somebody got paid off. But then you se the name of the game is if you’re a manager for a different team and you’re not on the Giants, and the Yomiuri and everybody else criticizes you, you’ll be out of a job. But if you’re a cooperative manager. Like requesting that the outfielder miss the ball, or something, maybe you can stay in your job a little longer. I don’t know. It’s very hard to say what they do. But remember, “You Gotta Have Wa.”
Q: That’s a catchy little phrase, isn’t it?
A: But it’s a very, very true statement. If you want to stay in Japan you gotta have wa. Everybody cooperates. Don’t rock the boat. When the guy missed the flyball, he cooperated. Remember Arturo Lopez. A long time ago, he was here. Arturo says “We never played for first place. We played for second place.” Arturo had 5-6 kids. And that was the old Tokyo ballpark. They tore it down. That was a long time ago. They playing for 2nd base.
I guess you saw the same thing in the automobile industry. Honda and Daihatsu. Suzuki. They didn’t challenge Toyota. Even Nissan Jidosha didn’t challenge Toyota. They gotta have Wa. Now that Toyota is extremely well-established and Nissan can…now they allow Nissan their 100 flowers to grow. And they allow Daihatsu to grow.But nobody can beat the leader. The leader is the Giants in baseball and Toyota in automobiles. And you go down then line and you find it in every single thing they do.
You Gotta Have Wa. You should write a song.
Q: I was on NPR.. They played “You Gotta Have Heart.”..etc.
Now, stories about Toyota.
A: This is story Photiadas tells me. He was working out in Ohta where they manufacture
(SIDE B)
(Counter 000)
A: (phone call with wife Yae inre Chief Counsel Tanaka lawsuit) …orders on Oct 19th that everybody gets 1%. So he doesn’t want to cross examine me. He wants to call Mr. Ide up. So you better call Mr. Ide-san up and tell him him to “Don’t answer Tanaka.” Because I made the statement at the Bengoshi-kai (lawyer meeting) on October 19th that everybody gets one per cent. I made the statement in court…. I think I did. And I Mr. Ide-san says “Kankei-nai” (irrelevant). See Ide-san was not interested in getting money. See. He answered something like that. He didn’t expect any money. Anyway, then they wanted me to come back Nov 16th, and I said “No, I’m gonna go to Hawaii. I don’t want to stay in a cold country.” So they said “When can we have a meeting again?” I said, “April or May.” And, of course, the court didn’t like it and Tanaka didn’t like it….Anyway, Tanaka-hidoi-yo. (Tanaka’s terrible.). I’ll talk to you about it later….Go home. I go home later. I will go home after 5 o’clock. 6 o’clock. OK? All right, take care)
My wife has to play golf tomorrow. So today she’s tired. This fucking bullshit life I’m leading. Anway, so..
Anyway, what they did, according to Mr. Fotiadas which you can get first hand information from him, …he’s just a civilian. He used to be an investigator when we were investigators. But he’s the type who if you ask him a question, he can answer it in ten pages. He’s in Hawaii now. I got his phone number….He worked there. And he watched the way Japanese brought in labor to learn automobile production line things, because they were going through jeeps and what not…..Anyway Fotiadas told me about how they kept bringing in new labor, new labor, to learn production lines. And his analaysis of the situation was that was what started Toyota.
Q: Who kept bringing in new labor?
A: The Labor Department. Kept bringing in new labor for the American place where they were fixing jeeps and trucks and whatnot. Teaching them assembly line methods of repair.Because at that time weren’t we in the Korean War?
Q: In what assembly line? On the military base?
A: No,no,no. Off the base. Repairing jeeps and trucks, that probably came in from the Korean War or something.
Q: This is a government operation?
A: Yeah. U.S. government. Yeah. He’s working for the American government. But his name is P-H-O-T-A-I-D-S. He’s very eloquent. They should have interviewed him instead of me on CBS. They would have got an earful. Anyway, he kept saying they’d bring in a couple thousand laborers and they’d work there 3 or 4 weeks. 4 months like that. Change it and bring another group, another group, And we were a training school for them. How to make tires. How to do everything.
Q: What was this facility called? Was it a government motor pool or was there an official name for it. Do you remember?
A: I think it was out in, someplace in Tokyo. Like near Tokorozawa or something. He would know, because he was there. He lived in Washington Heights. I imagine the Japanese did that in every area that they planned.
Q: Was there an Elrode story? On just Lope Surreal.
A: No Elorde story…Lope and I were very very close.
Q: What was he like?
A: Hell of a nice guy….but you know, should I say it again, You Gotta Have Wa. If you want to bring Filipino fighters to Japan, you gotta cooperate. You gotta play the game right.
(ALPHA 66/FBI/PIZZA & PIECES)
Q: What is this thing about tell pizza/pieces story? A note to myself.
A: Oh, that one. Prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion or after the Bay of Pigs invasion, I don’t know which one it was. I was in Miami and I went down to Fort Lauderdale. Some guy came down to pick us up and take us to Fort Lauderdale. Me and should we say my…American escort. I have a cousin. And we got in this guy’s car. And he was the driver. A big mother. Big enough to be a pro-wrestler.
Q: American. Cuban. Or what?
A: American. He was a member of the Alpha 66 group.
Q:What’s that?
A: That’s the group that handled the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Where Kennedy let them down and let them all get slaughtered. Shithead Kennedy.:
Q: This guy as an Anglo-Saxon. An Italian.
A: Anglo-Saxon. And we got in this car and he was driving us to Fort Lauderdale, And on the way to Fort Lauderdale, he asked me “What do I do?” or something like that, and I said, “pizzas.” And he misinterpreted it to mean pieces. And, of course, it’s a warm place and he’s got the window open and he probably didn’t hear me correctly. And he says, “oh, I can use 5,000.” And I said, “Everyday?” And, of course, now he got mad. And you don’t want to get those kind of people mad at you. So my friend who was sitting in the front seat with him, I was sitting in the back seat alone. He said “Nick is in the pizza business. P-I-Z-Z-A. The things you eat.” And of course, there was a big laugh. And then we went to an Oyster Bar in the middle of Fort Lauderdale. And these guys were all speaking Spanish. But I can understand Spanish. And in their conversation they started mentioning guns and Horowitz’s and you know. And I realized what they are talking about, I excused myself, I went back to my hotel in Miami, I got my suitcase and I went right to the airport and I came back to Tokyo. I certainly didn’t want to get involved in guns. So when I got back in Tokyo, which is like Monday or so or Tuesday morning, I got in my office and I sat down and my wife came in and said, “There’s a Japanese policeman outside here and he’s got some information that you’re dealing in guns and …and, you know, from the FBI. I think the guy’s name was Connors. New York City FBI man. Some kind of name like that….They were in my office. Japanese police. And my wife says, “It must be wrong. It can not be.” They sez, “Yeah, Mr. Nicolas is dealing with people in the gun business in Florida.” She sez, “That’s not true.” And she says, “If you want to see Mr. Nicolas, just open that door. He’s sitting there.” And the guy opened the door and looked in and there I was sitting there. And that was the end of that. But that’s how fast the word got up from that meeting. Picking out a nondescript Americans. I must have been followed all the way to Tokyo for Christssakes.
Q: So there was a spy in the group.
A: Who knows. No, it couldn’t be in the group. It had to be outside. Because in the group they would know that I was not involved in the conversation. So just somebody looking from the outside. Maybe they expected me to go out and get guns or something. I don’t know. That crazy? You can’t buy any guns in Japan. (note: American Tom Scully says he saw a case of shotguns in Nick Zappetti’s house in Tokyo. Zappetti denies being involved in gun running. But, well, he might because that is a very, very serious offense in Japan. Much, much worse than in the U.S. It’s the taboo of taboos. I suspect he was trying to protect a 3rd party.)
(J. CITIZENSHIP)
Q: By the way, I wanted to ask you, How did you feel when you became a Japanese citizen? Any emotions at all? Oh, well, of course, to me, it’s not a serious thing because I plan to become an American again. To me, it’s just something I have to go through in order to get my …you know, this is an economic thing, not a political thing….so I’m after my land in Hokkaido and I thought I could win my court case if I was a Japanese. And, so I had no emotional feelings about being and American or a Japanese. It was just a temporary situation. So if I can solve my court problems and get out of all these fucking courts, I will give up my Japanese citizenship. I don’t know if they’ll let me come back in the country. They may not allow me to enter Japan. See. So I have to think very carefully about that. Of course, I will find out what I can do and what I can’t do.
Q: What was that time you went to see (Ambassador) Reischauer and you asked him to help you out? What was that about?
A: ….Oh…They put in my passport book, for a one way trip to the United States. My passport, because I got involved in a gun deal. I mean the Imperial Hotel robbery. So I wanted to get that thing out of my passport. And of course good old Reischauer, the diplomat that he is, says, “I’m sure you know how to handle the situation.”
Q: Who put it in your passport?
A: The American Embassy. They put a stamp in the book that says “Valid for return trip to then United States only.”
So when I had to go down to immigration to get another 3-year extension, I had to staple all the book, so that they can’t open it. See if they see that thing they’re not going to give me an extension.
I contacted people in Washington DC to get that thing removed from my book. But finally, I got it done in Tokyo through Frank Scolinas the lawyer. It couldn’t be a very serious thing because it was …I didn’t pay much money to the lawyer….so…it came out of my book and my next book didn’t have it….Because you gotta go down and get your reentry visa and reentry visa and ….they see that, “this passport is only good for a one-way trip to the united States, how are you gonna get a reentry visa.”
Q: But Reischauer was no help.
A: No help at all. And my children were going to his sister-in-law’s school. We were contributing greatly to the school. Moneywise. So when that happened , I just said “Fuck them. I don’t need that kind of people.”
Q: Where’d you see Reischauer?
A: Oh I met him and his wife and his sister-in-law somewhere. I can’t remember where. Could be any place…Nishimachi School….And I thought it was a very backward answer, the son of a bitch….”I’m sure you can take care of yourself.” Shit. I didn’t ask him whether I can take care of myself or not, I asked him to help me take that page out of my passport….He was the ambassador…So I had to go through different methods. But I succeeded in having it removed.
Q: I think that’s enough for today. I gotta take off.
Q: 70’s & 80’s we haven’t talked about.
A: Very quiet. My life was diverted to the court case. Now, when I think about it, what a dope I was……I shoulda done what you did. Go to Japanese school. But I think I was just too stupid. I couldn’t study Japanese. I couldn’t learn Japanese.
Q: Didn’t seem to have held you back any.
A: No. Everybody thinks I speak good Japanese. I got good pronunciation. (ha.) My Japanese stinks. Today, the interpreter cost 70,000 yen. 2 hours work. Yo. I asked her, what do you get. She says, “I get about 40.”…I don’t know who she worked for. But she spoke good English though. But she gets 40,000 yen for working from one o’clock to three o’clock/. It’s pretty fucking good money. I wish I could make that money every hour. Jesus 20,000 yen and hour. (note: about $200)…
(Discussion about hard life of interpreters. Do it maximum of 4 hours. You’re drenched in sweat, Demands total concentration. It’s one of the hardest jobs there is.)
(LAWYER SUIT)
(Note: Nick in court being sued by own lawyer over fees)
A: I don’t know. I don’t have that opinion. Of course, I gotta go through it. I gotta listen to Japanese and English and then I gotta tell the girl she didn’t translate it right. It’s very dangerous for me to say that because the judge is watching…What am I gonna do with a translator if I’m gonna correct the translator.. So I have to say I didn’t understand you…..This fucking laywer. Hidoi, yo. This son of a bitch had the nerve, in his opening sentence, “Did you read my complaint?” And I said, “I find your complaint full of inaccuracies. And I’m being polite when I use that word.”
You know, they’re “hidoi yo.” ….Of course, this guy he’s only got one leg that he can stand on. He’s a lawyer and we’re in court. You know what he says…you can write it down and next time we can talk about it…We talk about how do you hire and how do you fire a lawyer?
Ok. I give a guy a job. He’s a cook. Do I write a letter to the Health Department that I’m giving him a job? Do I write a letter to the Labor Department that I’m giving him a job? Of course not. Now when I fire a cook, or a waiter, or an office …I don’t notify the Japanese government or anybody else that I’m firing them…Why do I have to notify the…somebody…because I’m firing a lawyer….who the hell is a lawyer? He’s another employee.
And boy, let me tell you this fucking judge got a grin about that big on his face…..I gotta write you a letter that I’m firing you. We gotta system in Japan that you gotta give one-month’s notice. You get one month’s pay. I says, “I treat Mr. Tanaka just like I treat a cook or a waiter or a driver. He ain’t no different to me and as a matter of fact, you’re one of my lowest paid employees.
Q: The judge liked that.
A: Sure, he gets 75,000 yen a month. Who fuck gets 75,000 a month. Shit.
… but J. law…the bar association…he’s too stupid my lawyer. He couldn’t answer me. He could have answered me and hurt me. If he could have said when we work for somebody we ask them to sign a “shiroi ininjo”(power of attorney)..We are signing a paper when we’re giving them a job. And therefore we should sign a paper when they’re losing a job. But he was too stupid to say that. Because my answer would have been I don’t know what I signed. I can’t read Japanese. But you know what I said, “If the lawyer feels that they are required to be notified in writing prior to dismissal, why don’t they say that to each one of their clients when the get a job. Whether it’s a retainer fee or hiring. No lawyer ever says that to you. So how could somebody know what you guys made your own rules up. Do your own rules apply to the other side? I follow only the rules of the Department of Labor.
He tried to talk about other court cases and I said, “If I were you, I’d be ashamed to bring up what you did for me legally…”
Q: That’s good.
A: Oh, you should have been there. You should have tape recorded what I said. You’d have something enough in that book there to make you go crazy….say, ooh, the way this guy answers…but I had to be careful. My heart was pounding. I could feel the expansion. And the doctor says, “be careful, when that happens, you’re going to go Pffft! You die. /and I tell you I was shitting green. I can’t get up and walk away. Because the tension in court and this guy knows if he can antagonize me, I will get excited. And if I get excited, I’m liable to say the wrong thing. Like the lawyer says “what does rationally mean?” How do you translate rationally?” In English? This thing says “Answer rationally…..I don’t know. My fucking English is gone. The Japanese will always do that and they find a fucking word in the dictionary and we’re not used to dictionary languages. See what he writes over here? My interpreter wrote this: “Try to avoid as possible as you can to state the specific figures of month or day. Try to avoid to state unnecessary things as “I was blackmailed. Or Tanaka hi-jacked the check. And whatnot. Keep your calm. And don’t get excited. And try to answer to questions asked to you rationally.”
Rationally means take it easy?
Q: No, in a logical way. To be logical. Use reason. It’s also a way of saying “don’t get excited.”
A; But you know it was very interesting. You Gotta Have Wa. You gotta sit there and play the game. You can’t go against the current. You gotta show that you’re cooperative. And you’re doing everything you can. But unfortunately this guy was not brought up that way. So it’s very hard to ask me to be the….you know.,..this whole case is about a guy wanting 15 million yen legal fees and I was under the impression that he was talking about legal fees. Not my fees.
(Unintelligible monologue continues)
And you know very interestingly. He was bragging about the case that I won. He was the lawyer. And he says this is a case involving 340,000 yen…a nuisance case…& I let him go through & he’s bragging about it..didn’t I do good, etc…and….
& then I said Mr. Tanaka deserted me and I lost the court case. & I had to pay that guy 340,000 yen, plus 150,000 court fees. He shit. He didn’t know that…the guy appealed. Cuz I didn’t get no money, I won an court case. Now if you get 1% of 300,000 what are you talking about. 3,000 yen. Would you go to court and argue about 3,000 yen You know I looked at him and says Jesus Christ Almighty. But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying I won a court case. I lost because you deserted me. Then he brags about Hokkaido. I said, you went to Hokkaido once and you deserted me.
Then we talk about another argument with owner of this bldg. A Chinese over the rent. You told me that Mr. Adachi, lawyer for Dai chong bldg,..you’re working with him on another case…you deserted me…anyway, it goes on like that cuznhe wrote the fuckingn thing there that hendidnsonucy so much to help. & then my laweyr says, “Don’t use the word blackmail.” Can you imagine that. Blackmail is blackmail.
Q: Gotta go.
A: Have another pizza.you don’t eat.that’s why you’re stomach is so small. You sit for for hours, you eat nothing. I sit here and watch other people eat. I go crazy.
Tokyo Junkie 