(TAPE 13) Nicola Interview Apr 3, 1991
(Includes: Miscellaneous, Revenge Fantasties and Tacit Book Permission, Yokota-Tanashi Details, Other Crimes and Misdemeanors, Growing Up in Mafia Neighborhood, East Harlem Family, Miscellaneous–deported, early Roppongi, Gangs, Family Life, Joe Dibello, Club 88, Nihon Kotsu, Ginza Machii, The Book,)
(SIDE A)
(Counter 000)
(MISCELLANEOUS)
Q: Tell me about Ted Lewin.
A: Ted Lewin was involved with the Latin Quarter. I can not…Of course, Mogami knows more about thaccident, or things like that. But Ted Lewin…Ted Lewin came over from the Las Vegas Group. But who he represents is another story. But Carey Yamamoto is his interpreter. And he speaks perfect Japanese. You got this guy here that you talking about at the Tosei-kai, ask him where Carey Yamamoto is. Then you get the complete story on Ted Lewin. He was 100% his interpreter. He would know everything. But Carey Yamamoto is an American citizen.
Q: He supposedly started the Latin Quarter? Was that the deal?
A: I don’t think so. I don’t know how the Latin Quarter got started. I know Shattuck is involved. But who’s behind Al Shattuck was. But it was just a night club. It was not any gambling idea. They might have had an idea to do gambling there.
Q: They have a casino in the back or something?
A: I don’t think so. It’s the same thing like Joe Dibello tried to in Yokohama with a casino in the back of the bar. But he got fucked up and wound up with Original Joe’s. That originally started out…but that was Mo Lipton and few other Jews. But they were not professional gamblers. But Ted Lewin comes from the professional gambling families. He would represent Las Vegas. And those people there. But Indon’t think he’s involved in the Lucky Luciano. Lucky Luciano is, you talking 1942, 43, 46. And he was what, Luciano was in the pimping business. Girls. He was not in gambling. But if Mogami used the name Luciano.
Q: He said he introduced himself as being from Luciano’s group.
A: You gotta go back and research and find out who’s in Luciano’s group. Who’s the papa.
Q: That’s all you ever knew about Ted Lewin? You ever meet him?
A: I can’t say yes. I can’t say no. It was a long time ago. But I know he ran around in a black Cadillac.Carey Yamamoto was with him all the time. He came in an out maybe three or four times…
(BS back & forth)
A: You see the relation right away when you remind me that Manila was the base of Ted Lewin. That’s where Al Shattuck went back and forth, quite a few times.
Q: What was Al Shattuck like. Describe him to me.
A: 5’10” 5’11”. Healthy. Wore glasses.
(More BS)
Q: A Japanese crime writer was telling me at the time, there were still street cars running in Roppongi, and the only lights that you could see were the Hamburger Inn and the Club 88. And he says the rest was just pitch black. And then he said the American Club opened up and they started the Gaslight and the Hotel New Japan opened up, & New Latin Quarter (in the basement). But he said Club 88 was the first one in this area.
A: Well, I opened August 1, 1956. Right.
Q: Was the Club 88 there then, across the street? Leo Prescott ran that right?
A: Leo Prescott ran it after. At the end. I don’t think he was before Shattuck.
Q: Let’s go back to Shattuck.
A: He started Club 88. There’s another name involved. Wally Gayda. Maybe Wally Gayda was the first operator of the Club 88. You got Wally Gayda, Al Shattuck, and Leo Prescott came in at the end. Because while the diamond robbery threw Shattuck in jail. When I got out in 56. Shattuck when in in 56…..I don’t how it worked or how they got involved, but those were the names involved. Wally Gayda got in all sorts of trouble in the States with his wife divorcing him, this, that & the other thing. He ran to Manila also. But Wally Gayda now is back in California.
Now if you call, in that area…if you call Jack Howard at Del Mar, his number I think is 619-481-8888. (correct.). San Diego. Jack Howard is a good friend of Wally Gayda. He was an insurance guy and he was here in those days. You ask Jack. You say Nick asked me to call you up. Gayda’s got to be in Southern California. I don’t know what he’s doing for a living.
Q: & what was Shattuck’s personality like? He’s a Jew. That’s what Mogami said?
A: Of course. Shattuck is a Jew and I think he’s still in Mexico City. Now. Shattuck was a healthy person. But he was not an aggressive type. Or a nasty type. He was not picture as a night club boss.
Q: Did he have any enemies besides McFarland?
A: Well, in those days, life was great. Everybody was enjoying life and there was no animosity, In guess. Everybody was happy-go-lucky. And then he was involved with a Doris Lee. Oh, and Liz Laurie. And Doris Lee is the Dragon Lady of Saigon by the way. She was running shows. They could have a fucking mortar attack and she’d keep the show on the stage. She wouldn’t care…..military shows for the GI’s in Vietnam…Good looking blonde. Singer. 6 foot. Well-built. Loud-mouthed son of a bitch, get in bed with her and she talks.
Q: Did you get in bed with her?
A: Not me. I almost got that far. But I couldn’t stand the fucking gab.
Q: Liz Laurie.
A: Liz Laurie was a girl who used to run the Yokohama club. A lesbian is ever there was one. But these are the people who, if you can get near them can give you a better background as to what was happening in 1950’s….They weren’t around by the 60’s.
Q: So he had nothing to do with the robbery.
A: It was just an unfortunate accident. Cuz he had nothing to do with the diamond robbery. No way.
Q: Who wound up with the diamonds?
A: MacFarland gave them away on the street corners. (Wrong: TU version is correct)
Q: Are you serious?
A: Yes, that son of a bitch didn’t give a fuck about the diamonds. He took the diamonds because he was…but he wasn’t a criminal at heart, that he was going to steal something and become rich. He lived from day to day. He didn’t give a shit. Just like I told you. The theme at that time was playn life, enjoy life.
Q: He just wanted the thrill of it?
A: Yeah. The thrill of it. He did something. He went out and gave all those diamonds away?
Q: I’d say, whatever he took, couldn’t be many diamonds, but I never got one. Fuck, I was as close to him as I am to my underwear. And, of course, that one day, he stole the diamonds and by 8 o’clock at night he was arrested. So he only had 8 hours of freedom probably. And he had a lot of queer boys with him. He was AC-DC.
Q: Did he tell you he did that? That he gave them away on the street corners.
A: That’s the only way you can answer it. (ed. More BS here). He didn’t keep any. Shattuck didn’t get any. Mac says he filled up an old matchbox with diamonds and gave it to Shattuck. That’s about as bullshit as you can get. How much diamonds can fit in one of those little boxes. And they sez what it was $75,000 worth of diamonds.
Q: So Shattuck was just into night clubs? He didn’t have a casino in the Latin Quarter or anything like that?
A: Not that I know of. I would have been by to gamble. And I don’t think at that time or anytime in that area, there was a such a thing as a dice table or a roulette wheel. Where do you get them? The military didn’t have that kind of shit. (Wrong: Lewin had one at Mandarin. Jim Blessin later expropriated it.)
Q: Knowledgable source, Japanese crime journalist told me there was casino in back of Club 88.
A: But who would go there?
Q: He said it was the first place all the gaijin went.
A: No, I was there everynight. How come I don’t know about gambling. I never saw a casino in the back. I mean they could say what they want. You could disprove it. But…Al Shattuck would disprove it. If it was true he’d say it. He don’t give a fuck….Shattuck ran 88. Leo Prescott’s time was later, after Shattuck. Mac in LQ was Shattuck’s time there, 1956. What removed Shattuck from LQ, how come he got removed…He got arrested. When they arrested him, they let me go. They thought he had the diamonds so MacFarland says they gave them to him, not to Nicolas. Then Club 88 opened after the Latin Quarter. Gayda was first boss of 88. Shattuck 2nd. …etc….Then they had the Cosmopolitan club which is up in the Nogi Jinja (shrine)…Then Club Riki, by Riki’s apartment house near TBS (I lived there too) Not Riki Apato or Riki Mansion….But in a nearby location…(draws map)….
‘ More BS about Riki’s knifing incident. Redundant….that evening Noguchi of Tosei kai came out and he stabbed the guy who stabbed Rikidozan.
A: When he (your friend the crime journalist) starts talking about the guys who killed the gang boss, he’s talking about Richie Imai, George Nakayama, and Matsubara…Now Matsubara is about three-quarters dead from the last time I heard him. …..
Q: He said story is part fact, part legend.
A: The story I know is that they met there….I told you the story, 3 people against 3.
Q: The other one was Sumiyoshi (was that Sumiyoshi?)
A: Was that Sumiyshi?
Q: They were big gang in Asakusa….
A: They come here all the time. (The Sumiyoshi). The boss comes here all the time. He’s not allowed to drink. So he steals a drink everyone in a while. But he walks by himself down the street. Can you imagine that? No, bodyguards. He walks around Roppongi like….
Q: Whole history of TSK fascinating, cuz Machii was Korean, outsider, he came, he broke all the fucking rules. All the traditional laws of the Yakuza. He just didn’t give a shit about them. another theme about outsiders….
(BS)
Q: Machii’s sick…There’s another guy named Hattori in that TSK group who will speak to you. He’s gotta be in his 60’s also. And he speaks English. But Machii’s only 15 steps away from here. You know where he is, don’t you?…TSK.CCC. etc.
Q: Al Shattuck’s appearnce.
A: He was a quiet guy, weighed 180 pounds. He was a quiet type. A Well-dressed type. Who was (gestures) …I knew him very well. He was just a night club operator. But he was the image of what you think a night club operator is, you know, with a cigar…hey, you get …very smooth, very confident in what he is doing. And it was just a let’s say he was cast in the job and he got the job through Ted Lewin, so there might be some truth in it that Ted Lewin was the man behind the Latin Quarter. (ed. Of course there was some truth to it. He was the man, along with Yoshio Kodama). But like I said if you can find Carey Yamamoto, …you meet these Tosei-kai people, they know Carey. And Carey’s probably far away from gangsters…
Q: These questions are in no particular order, but tell me about the first time you met Rikidozan.
A: When the hell was it….Frank Scolinas…Before he went to States…I opened my restaurant in 1956. Before that I was generally underground. You know run around. …….Discharged in Feb 46, in 1947 I got Scolinas’s job as a legal advisor, in the GHQ legal section. Which would be the old Kaijo Bldg or the new Kaijo bldg. You know where MacArthur’s headquartters building was. The legal section. Sotodori.Across street from Imperial Palace, down toward Banker’s Club….I’m trying to remember my own history..How can I remember somebody else’s.
Q: Switch gears. Did CIA have base here in Akasaka in 60’s. …Olympics gave rise to new laws. Drinking estahblishments could not stay open past midnight. This gave rise to snack bars. Thus then a: only places you could find open were the snack bar types like Charlie Manos’ place in Akasaka.
A: My place
Q: You could serve booze but it had to be an eating establishment. Not like a cabaret or a night club.
A: I think you could serve food, but you couldn’t serve it after 11 o’clock. But then again everything at that time was 11 o’clock limit. Even night clubs stayed open till 11 or 12 o’clock…I had a big restaurant, but no bar in it.
Q: Did Charlie Manos work for the CIA?
A: Charlie Manos was a …he was …I guess you’d call him a guerilla find behind enemy lines in greece. And he was a major, or he came out as a major…in the U.S. Army. And then he came into Japan here…and if you say CIA, …the nearest way I could say it would be Ichigaya. Maybe over in Ichigaya somewhere. And that’s where probably Charlie Manos was…Because those days, they didn’t have CIA. That have OSI. They had CID probably. But international operations, I don’t know. I don’t think they had anything in Japan at that time….Probably CIA…When did they start….(1949)
Q: When you in CPC, did you ever run into any gangsters?
A: ….In those days they probably didn’t have gangsters, semi-established, ….Machii was probably the first gangster that was semi-established. & he was not really a….my romantic story is they asked him to fight the MP’s at Sugamo, where now the Sunshine Hotel is….They asked Machii to fight the MP’s. Sugamo. That was the camp that held all the…war criminals.
Q: He was into black market and protection. That was right after the war. Army opened up- whorehouse inhwieasajima…(out by Haneda Airport) for the GI’s so they wouldn’t bother the local girls. Whores became conduit for black market goods….Cigarettes and booze, got em on the black market, that’s how Machii got his start in BM. Then he got into protection (Yojimbo business)
A: that was in Yoshiwara. Mukojima. Possible they did one near Haneda.
Q: So you don’t remember initial impression of Rikidozan in Scolinas’s office?
A: I knew that he was a sumo man and that he was going to become a pro-wrestler. And in those days, you weren’t thinking that it’s gonna be something important. And you wanna meet. …I met so many people in those days, you don’t care….
Q: Did you think he was big or mean or rough?
A: No, no, no. I’d say basically, Riki…even at the end…Riki was not a mean rough man. But if he drinks, and you get in front of him, you’re gonna get hurt. He didn’t give a fuck…I told you. Women. Anybody get in front of him, they’d get in trouble. But I know Riki like when he was sitting in his office in that building he made a club out of, he was trying to be a businessman. He was trying to be a , you know, astute. He was not the nasty…I remember he was trying to…what the fuck is his name now…with this guy…Dichne…he’s now in London and he’s a big fucking operator in the money business. And Dichne. He’s in London someplace and he’s of Russian descent. And he was trying ton sell Riki a bowling center with the strings on the pins. And I remember I was in his office…I used to go bowling, and Riki says what do you think and I said the guy’s crazy….Dcihne,,you can’t take the heat. You fuck around with Riki, and you try to cheat that guy, you are in trouble. So Dichne left Japan. He’s a White Russian. But he was very eloquent. He spoke English, Japanese, Italian, Russian,
…you’re trying to find all the ghosts. They’re buried in the woodwork.
(blah, blah, more bullshit about difficulties of putting book together.)
(REVENGE FANTASIES &TACIT BOOK PERMISSION)
Q:…Like a puzzle, takes time…..etc…..But this story is so god damn fascinating. I mean it’s got everything. Your story. Just your story. It’s got passion, revenge, greed….love…
A: I told leave the …just say at the end of the book in Nicola….Just say “This is not the end of the Nicola story.” I finally made a connection. You know I been looking. I just paid $17, 065 to somebody.
Q: To do what?
A: I’m gonna kill that fucking taxi driver. But don’t put that in the book, please.
. Q: You’re gonna kill….that’s the most interesting thing …
A: But you can’t write because I not do it yet.
Q: What taxi driver?
A: The guy that stole my name, my trademark, my restaurants, he beat me out of about $350 million U.S. dollars. I finally make the right connection. But I don ‘t know if it’s gonna work. So I got a hard on for….Did I tell you my lawyer sued me…he didn’t sue me, he wrote a letter for 8 million yen.
Q: Tanaka did , yeah.
A: Tanaka won the court case. Because my wife says don’t fight. The lawyer that I used…boy I tell you these lawyers are son of a bitches. You should write a whole chapter on lawyers activity in Japan. Ok. Q: Where’s the connection, Hawaii? Italy?
A: Phillippines. No, no, please don’t write that yet.
Q: Okay. No, I won’t.
A: I sent the money. I don’t think I’m gonna get cheated because he lives in the hometown of my family. So he ain’t gonna escape that easy. (Tom’s River?)
Q: When I can this done and typed up in final form, you can take a look at it.
A: No, I’m not worried about it. I just don’t wanna…like I say, just leave the…
Q: You don’t want to be arrested
A: The Nicola story is not finished yet. That’s it. See. But I always dreamed, how I’d wait. And I’d pray at night that somebody would come over and touch me with a magic wand and make me invisible. Man, the fucking trouble I’d make.
But everybody’s got those fantasies.
The other day I was in my office and I saw the letter that I wrote to the lawyer. I should give you that letter. Don’t bit the hand that feeds you.
Q: Tanaka.
A: This was Hasegawa. They a ….it was a beautiful thing. They did a …it was a kiddish game. It was so well done that they only thing you could do in the book was alert the people that are dealing with lawyers. It was well planned. But, I don’t know. I guess in the end, I’m the one who was wrong. I had a chance to speak in court. I should have said “no, this is not…the check was a mortage blackmail, see.” And my lawyer said “If you say that…” Mogami was the interpreter! See. And Mogami told me, he says, “If you say you use the word that the lawyer blackmailed you, then this guy will not go to court. And you can’t, you know…that story about the man who represent himself is the biggest fool….You know that expression. And that bothered me, because next time, like with this Hasegawa, or if it was an appeal with Tanaka, I would represent myself. The most I can lose, I already lost. What can I lose?
Q: Did you see anyone killed in WWII?
A: Naw. I could tell you when I went in WWII. April 1, 1945, we landed there. And I would like to know how I went through 4 years, 5 years of the Marine Corps. I still must have been a dumb kid. You know. But then I was aviation personnel, not a mud soldier. But I was on the beach for 2 days and I thought nothing of it. You know, I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t hiding. Whoever heard of death? There was no fucking war, etc. blah.
(YOKOTA-TANASHI DETAILS)
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. But what happened what I made a joint venture with a Japanese and he decided to steal all the night savings, and in the afternoon, he went and took the money out. Nice guy. Then when I got pissed off they went and called the Tanashi gumi,. Tanaka-san. Tanashi is little town near Yokota. …Tanaka wasn’t my partner.
….I walked in, 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. …and, of course, that was the first month I was in business. All my checks bounced. What a partner I had. So then I gave him the restaurant.
Q: Wait. Let’s go back. Was he (Tanaka) filing his fingernails?
A: You can glorify it anyway you want.
Q: White hat?
A: Yeah, of course, white suit.
Q: White shoes.
A: White shoes, probably.
Q: Did have a scar on his face?
A: I don’t know. I can’t say that. Cuz he’s still alive now.
Q: You looked at him right away you thought
A: I knew right away.
Q: What’s first thing he said?
A: I don’t know. I can’t remember that detail. I do know he came in my restaurant. It was wise, my 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 we took the restaurant back…..1958, 1959. (huh)
Q: He came in. What did he say. What did he want?
A: He was the boss. Crime incorporated took over the restaurant.
Q: He just said “we’re taking over your restaurant.”
A: I said, “Pay for it.”
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: 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. 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)
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/
Q: How big was his 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…..
Q: So you sold your half? Or what?
A: I said give me money. I 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: They just took it over like that. I owned the land. I owned the building. It must have been an argument…And the only thing I could do was fight fire with fire. So I called Mr. Machii. I got little headache, some trouble. And he sent out his lieutenants. Soldiers. And it ended…in one week, it ended. Less than a week probably. Then I got the restaurant back. And they had to pay 2.4 million…..1 week war. 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.
Q: Sword or knife.
A: (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. 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.
Q: Machii just did this to you out of friendship?
A: Business. It’s his business.
Q: He made a profit of 1.2 million yen
A: 1.2 million was a lot of money. Then we had to pay more money because the kid died. And In don’t know now. That’s was a long time ago. 33 years ago….Now, of course, if you went to Machii and you got trouble, I don’t think that they would even think about violence.
Q: I understand they’re not into that. I know they still run the pachinko stuff and yakiniku (cooked meat) restaurants.
(OTHER CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS)
A: You want to open up a pachinko place, you got to pay them off. And I remember the figure used to be 30 million yen to open up a pachinko place. But now, today’s, inflated prices, it probably went way up.
Q: How much would you say?
A: 100 million….get this guy from Tosei-kai, he’ll say “We don’t do that.” Of course, they’re gonna say that they don’t do that. …
Pachinko makers are all Koreans you know.
Q: I asked you before about gunrunning, too. You said you never got into that? You never got into selling guns. I know somebody who said he saw one…he was in your apartment many many years ago back in the 50’s, you had a crate of shotguns, a box of shotguns…
A: Don’t believe that shit. When I lived over here, I bought a .22.rifle that was a pump gun from a colonel at the Stars and Stripes. I forgot who he was. And that was November Thanksgiving time. And I went down to get it registered. And my chauffeur was Joe Imamori. My chauffer. He was getting the paperwork done.
Q: What year was that?
A: Before 1960. It’s the papers, you can probably find it. I remember Thanksgiving. I remember my chauffeur was down at the customs office which was someplace where the Dai-Ichi Hotel is. Over there somewhere. And they told him to take the gun home because it’s Thanksgiving. He took the gun home to my house. And sure enough, the next day, I got raided by the fucking police. And there’s the gun sittin’ on the piano, with the fucking documents to make it legal entry into Japan, and, of course, they took the documents & threw it away, this is illegal possession of a rifle. And I think that that made the newspaper and a picture and everything else. So that would be Thanksgiving …close to 1958. 59. ……22 rifle. Pump gun. A copy of the 30-30. And I bought it from the guy who was running the Stars and Stripes, or FEN. I think he was the guy who was running FEN. The colonel in charge of FEN.
Q: And that was legal because it was considered a hunting rifle?
A: It was for my ranch in Hokkaido. So, it was not …it was legally gone through customs clearance. And the law is that I think you can only use 7 shells in it. Of course, eventually I bought another one. Still can’t find what fucking happened to it. That & my 30-30 disappeared. Some day somebody will get killed and they’ll say that’s Nicola’s gun.
Q: You had a 30-30?
A: I had a 30-30 pump gun, that I brought in from the States. I had no trouble with that one. You know the cowboy gun, the Winchester? And I had a pump gun, a 22 was the same way.
Q: But that incident was in the newspapers? You were arrested?
A: Oh yes, of course.
Q: That was when you were in jail for a week and Mogami came down?
A: When Mogami came to help me was when I got involved with the …taking all those sleeping pills.
Q: But you said after that..there was something…
A: Well, Mogami always came. He was always there. He was the man…he must have came down to my troubles about 5 to 10 times. That’s why he knows a lot about me.
Q: Why do you think the cops came to get the gun? Who tipped them off? Who did that?
A: It’s very hard. They came to raid the house. You see, you gotta remember, when you’re selling flour and water and they’re not used to it…I got a Cadillac. In 1964, I had a boat in the harbor. I had the big 55 foot cabin cruiser. And of course, I had the ranch in Hokkaido. And I’m out every night drinking and having a lot of fun. So that makes people think that you know you’re a millionaire and you can’t make it in the restaurant business, so you gotta be selling dope or …in those days they didn’t even know what dope was. And, actually, it was all legitimate pizza money. But, of course, I think my balance sheet will show I lost money.
Q: Like any good Japanese company.
A: But you got Cadillacs. My son’s got sports cars. Yae-chan had her own car. We couldn’t make ends met. Terrible life….So they raid the house. They raided the house so many times…that’s when I used to live over here. You know, behind the Clover. Now, it’s next door to TSK.CCC….I told you I got arrested that time for…of course, they had the gun…but an empty box of Johnny Walker. Would you believe that? An empty box of Johnny Walker, that the maid took her clothing in and brought it to my house. And they says, ‘Ah’
….but, of course, they did find my secret room. That house had a secret room. Course that house is torn down now, but it had a secret room in…it had a Japanese room in the back of the house, and then it had a clothing closet and if you opened the clothing closet, you got clothes, but if you go behind the clothing closet, it had a steel door that opened into a secret room. I never forget that fucking room….Let’s say we had a ten mat room, way in the back of the house and it was a tatami room,….sliding doors, Japanese got what you call a fusami, something like that, and you open that and its clothing. You know, hang it up. But when you separate it, there was a steel door and you open the steel door and you went into a little room that could have been like a two-mat room, three-mat room, and I used to put all my illegal shit there. My cigarettes and my whiskey. I’ll be a son of a bitch. They found that fucking room.
But the gun was not hidden there. It was out on the piano. That’s right. The day before that. How did it work? I got tipped off that they were gonna raid the house. So I went in that room and I think it also had a kotatsu. The tatami room had a kotatsu. I went in that room and I took all the booze out. I’m living across the street from then Azabu police station, and I took all the shit out and put it in the back of the truck of a Nash Rambler I had at the time. I put everything in back of the Nash Rambler. 5 or 6 cases of booze and cigarettes and shit like that. And my chauffeur’s driving it. And he’s hearing all this noise in the back of the car. And he opens it up and he sees all the booze and cigarettes and he figures I just made a haul somewhere. And he brought it back into the fucking house. And I can’t tell everybody I’m gonna get raided, you know. Jesus Christ. So there I was with my pants down. Probably Mogami told me they’re gonna raid my house.
So they went crazy. They knew the stuff was in the house and they couldn’t find it. Finally, they found it. So I got arrested.
Q: They put it back inside in the secret room?
A: Yeah. The stupid bastard. And that was a big house. That was an 85 tsubo house or something like that. It was a 3-story house. I could have hid it so many different places. Dumb bastard.
Q: Where’d you get this stuff, from the base?
A: All over. PX. Base.
Q: Were you selling it then or was it just for your own use?
A: Oh, restaurant sales. Oh, business was very good. My own restaurant. Bob, those days you gross a million yen, you know, today I can’t even gross a million yen. Who the fuck grosses a million yen anymore.
Q: With all that crowd Friday night, Jesus Christ.
A: Well, Friday night, you were here. 610,000 yen. You know I did good in March. I only lost about $4,000. I this business that’s good.
(GROWING UP IN MAFIA NEIGHBORHOO)
Q: All right. Questions all out order…..Did you see any violence when you were growing up in New York?
A: New York of course.
Q: Gang fights, shit like that?
A; Well, no, they don’t fight…I grew up. On 116th street. Between 1st and 2nd avenue. And that’s where “Trigger” Mike Coppola lived there. And ….Mike Coppola was the artichoke guy, the King of the Artichoke.
Q: He was a gangster?
A: Well, listen, you don’t fuck around with those people.
Q: They call him Trigger Mike because he had a happy trigger finger.
A: He was a trigger man, yeah. I mean you go back to Mafia history and NY history, you’ll find it. And I was very surprised the other day, would you believe it. Somebody was talking about gangsterism in NY,….and they were talking about the Lucchese Family. Well, the Lucchese family was tied up with my family. You know. That’s Three Finger Brown. You know you Lucchese. At that time, Joe Bonnanos. Mike Coppola. Joe Rao. Joe Stretch.
Q: Frank Lucchese was 3Finger Brown.?
A: Luchese.
Q: Who were the other guys you mentioned.
A: Well, over there you had the small time peanuts, but they had Joe Rao. Joe Rao was the guy that they put in Ellis Island and he brought his birds with him. He was flying birds from the island. He had a sofa set, and a radio and the booze and the broads. He became a very big story. But that’s 116th street. They were …
Q: The others?
A: Joe Stretch. These are the nicknames. 1935. 1936. 1937. Something like that. And that’s the days when they had Cadillacs. And stand on the corner. Trigger Mike lived, I’d say, his address at that time would be probably, 336 East 116th Street. Cuz I know he lived right past 326. Coulda been 336.
Q: What was he into?
A: He was a Mafia Don. Now which family he belonged to would be difficult. Cuz then the Gambino Family came out. These are new family names, you know. But you knew all these people when you are growing up. Oh, yeah. You don’t realize it but they were dons, they were big fucking wheels, you know you were just a kid, what do you know, you don’t know what those guys are. You just know they’re gangsters. They’re Mafia people. But you see the Mafia when I was a kid was not an organization that you were afraid of. Because it was the guy next door. And his son and you played together and things like that. Now you got another name that you know, the movie star, what’s his name, Franciosa? Tony Franciosa came from 305, East 116th Street. And his manager was Richard Laporri (sp?) Dr. Laporri’s son? These are the people I grew up with. And there was the greatest numbers runner over there, a guy called Jinx. His favorite number was 512…..He used to take the numbers. And that’s when Vito Marcantonio was living at the Harlem House. He used to be the congressman…that was branded a communist, before people found out what communism was.
(SIDE B)
A: Then I saw an Italian guy or somebody who was in the electric chair. We went to his funeral. We went upstairs there to where he was dead in a coffin. He had a beautiful sun tan. …I can’t remember who he was, but, he lived a little past my house, so he lived in the 200’s. 210. 220. 116th Street. And across the street was Dr. Manzello. He also got involved with the law. We went upstairs. You know the casket’s in the living room. He was well-sunburned, though.
Q: At that time Lucchese was the top don?
A: No, I can’t say that. I can’t think of who were the …in those days, it’s hard to say. Of course, I was a kid now, I was 15 years old, see. So you don’t expect a 15-year old to know the, what is it, the pecking order of who’s who, you know.
Q: How old were you when you saw this guy?
A: I was about a 14-year old kid. 1935 probably. 36. 37.
Q: You ever see any shootouts in your neighborhood. Murders. Guys machine gunned?
A: No. There was no violence in the streets. No you couldn’t even go in that street. Now that’s a big street. That’s as wide as this one here. You know from New York, that’s a big street.
Q: It all took place in dark alleys or behind closed doors?
A: Yeah, well nobody fucked around with those people.
(EAST HARLEM FAMILY)
Q: You said your father was a rough carpenter and your mother just took care of the kids. You had eleven brothers and sisters. You were the youngest?
A: I was in the middle. I was near the middle. I was #5 from the bottom. I must have been…I was #7.
Q: You know where they are now? You keep in touch with them?
A: My sister lives in Fort Lauderdale. She’s older than me. One of my younger sisters lives in Scarsdale New York. Another younger sister, by the way, I spent some time with her in Hawaii. She lives in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. But I haven’t seen the other two sisters in god only knows how long….Philips New Jersey. Phillipsburg. You know it’s a pathetic sight to see the…you know you visualize the thing as young beautiful girls, And boy when I saw my sister this time she was a roly poly. And she jumped up and down and she was fucking genki patti patti. (high spirits). And me, I can barely walk.
Q: OK, that’s 4 sisters. How about the brothers?
A: They’re all dead. All 6 are dead. Yep. None of them made it. One was killed in Korea. Paratrooper.He made the jump behind the North Korean capital. And they got wiped out because of the stupid fucking lieutenant. And my next younger brother was a kid named John, who died. He lived in Vacaville, California. Then my brother Frankie died. He lived in Bayshore, Long Island. And my brother Tommy died, but I don’t know the details of that.
Q: And your Mom and Dad are both dead?
A: Yeah. They’re both dead. They were born in 1888. Both of them. Born in Italy. Calabrese. Southern Italians.
Q: When did they come to the U.S?
A: Well, they must have come in 1905. So 16, 17, 18. Like that. I guess they were about 17. I think my mother was carrying a baby at that time. I don’t think that baby survived.
Q: And he got a job as a rough carpenter. And that was it?
A: He was an ice man until then refrigerator knocked him out of business. Delivered ice. And when refrigeration came in, probably 1935, 34, that was the end of the ice man. But he was a mean, nasty son of a bitch. But he was a strong cocksucker. I hit him one time. Boy I ran like a fucking thief….a mean, nasty bastard….He fight with anybody.
Q: Were you close to him at all?
A: I didn’t like him. I never liked him. He killed my mother.
Q: How’d he do that?
A: He bearhugged her, broke her fucking rib and she wound up with cancer…But you know, he got married, the old Italian at that time was thinking that getting a lot of kids and let the kids go to work and bring home the money.
Q: Bearhugged your mother. Broker her rib. She got cancer out of that?
A: She had cancer. She used to always tease,,,she’d say, “Tonight you guys are gonna eat spare ribs because they took another rib out.” She was interesting. She was funny.
Q: Bone cancer? He bearhugged her on purpose?
A: You know a woman’s that’s bore 11 fucking kids ain’t exactly the the healthiest fucking things in the world. And all the stress and strain. How you gonna feed kids in those days. The best thing that ever happened to Uncle Sam was that somebody invented Mussolini and another one invented Hitler and another one invented Tojo. If it wasn’t for that Americans will be shooting rifles from the back end of a horse.
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: We’d be primitive. Like we were….It’s the same thing like we see now with the Gulf War. All the technology is coming, shows technology. They gonna go more for technology. In those days they weren’t thinking about technology, they were only thinking about how to eat.
Did I tell you the joke that I heard. About Bush falling down and getting a concussion. And getting in a coma? Anyway, Bush was walking down the steps and he tripped and he wound up hitting his head. And he wound up in a coma. He was in a hospital bed for 7 years. And when he woke up, he asked a question. “How long have I been here?”
“7 years.”
“How’s unemployment?”
“We don’t have any unemployment.”
“How’s the national deficit?”
“We don’t have any national deficit.
He says, Jesus, you know and he went on like that. And he asked the last question which is the punchline,
“How much is gasoline?”
“200 yen a gallon.”
Q: Ok, you’re parents didn’t speak English.
A: Nope.
Q: They stay at Ellis Island when they first came over?
A: Oh, yeah, they were one of those people who came through Ellis Island.
God only know what name they came under. Cuz a lot of those people came under different names because at that time, Mussolini or somebody was fooling around in Africa. Wasn’t there …wait, they came in 1905…there was something about military conscript that my father escaped from.
Q: Escaped from the Italian army.
A: He didn’t want to go fight Africa. That was before Mussolini’s time.
(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.
(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?
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.
(JOE DIBELLO)
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…
(NIHON KOTSU)
Q: When you had that trouble with Nihon Kotsu,…these yakuza were employed by Nihon Kotsu, they just showed up and took over your place.
A: Well, those were their own employees. I classify them as gangsters. (garbled)
Q: That’s what Mogami says. They were yakuza, they just physically went in and took over. How come you didn’t get Ginza Machii to help you out of that one.
A: It happened so fast. So efficient. So perfect. That even if you called Jesus Christ, it was too late. They already had the name transferred. They technically owned the place. And they transferred the name. I had no choice. The only thing I could do…You know I brought in gangsters from the States to get rid of them people…but, in the end you’re gonna lose because the property has been legally registered in somebody’s else’s name. How you gonna win?
Q: You brought in gangsters from the States? Tell me about that.
A: I brought in two of them. I can tell you their names. I wonder if we should do that.
Q: Where? From NY?
A: California. Mafia people. But what can they do?
Q: What did they do?
A: The documents are there. …You know the story. I supposed to pay money on 3/31 & I made another agreement before March 31, borrowed another 60 million yen. I had to pay 160 mill. On that date. Then before that I borrowed money I had to pay at end of December. So here I’m dreaming that by the end of December I got trouble and they cut me off at the end of March. So they transferred the name, the land, the trademark, everything.
The one guy that I brought in–his name is DAN BUSBY–he was a lawyer. He was a Mafia-educated lawyer. At that time. And another one was OZZIE CURTIS–who’s still a fucking manipulator. I don’t know what happened to him. But these guys were playboy people, what do you them?
Q: They weren’t musclemen?
A: Ozzie would be…they were dangerous people because they had big mouths and they could call upon people to help them. I even had Sinatra’s bodyguard ED PUCCI come in. But it was too late. Legally, I was dead.
You couldn ‘t force anybody. You had to kill them. And even if you killed them. You can’t change the name….
And you know, I was reading, this woman, wrote the book on Sinatra, his name is in that book. (Ed Pucci). He was one of Sinatra’s bodyguards. But I remember him. He was a 300 pounder and he comes from Cleveland, Ohio.
But I could never figure why, I can’t remember why, …I wouldn’t have asked them if I didn’t have a plan.
But the only chance I had to get that property back was legally, through the courts and I learned that Americans don’t win in court. 17 years in that fucking court case. Ok.
(BS)
(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)
(THE BOOK)
Q: Nick, I think this is going to be a good book. I just have that feeling about it.
A: There’s some much more. Personal attitude. Personal feelings. Of course, I’m very anti-Japanese.
Q: It’ll all come together, etc. blah. Once I get regular draft witten down on paper, I’ll show it to you…In had to write WA about 5 or 6 times before it was ready. Have to keep checking things, etc.blah./
A: That right? Let me tell you, you got to work to make money. It doesn’t come that easy.
Q: When you work that hard on a book, it hangs around for a while. C&B, written 14 years ago. Can still buy it in bookstores. That’s what makes the difference, doing all the legwork, etc.
A: Yeah, pays off… yeah, course, you look at a book today, guy says you wanna buy that book, say no I read that 20 years ago. Still on the shelf like it’s a brand new book.
Q: But I mean people keep buying it because of the information that’s in it…..And this is a look at postwar Tokyo that nobody has done. And I don’t think anybody will do it either.
A: No, they can’t there’s nobody here. I’m the last of the Mohicians.
Q: And that great symmetry between you and Riki and Machii. All outsiders. All really successful. And all just ran right smack into the Japanese wall. And it’s just too bad that Riki got killed….
A: Yeah, if you tried to figure what would his life be like today. Well, of course, Japanese are glad he’s dead. Then, of course, if it comes out that he’s a North Korean. Jesus Christ. But those days, it was all Korea. There was no north & south…that came on in 1950.
Q: What ever happened to Frank Nomura?
A: I fired him. He’s around. You want to call him, I give you his number.
Q: Why’d you fire him.
A: Because he’s a fucking Korean. (laugh)
Q: You’re always firing him.
(End Tape)
Tokyo Junkie 