Tokyo Underworld (39 page)

For descriptions of Tokyo as it appeared immediately after the war, the author relied on interviews with eyewitnesses James L. Adachi, Kyoko Ai, Shin Asahina, Frances Baker, Jim Blessin, Toshi Cooper, Tetsuo Sato and Yoshiko Takaishi.

The description of the Ozu black market is based on accounts by Honda in
Kizu
, by GHQ government section official Harry Emerson Wildes in his
excellent book
Typhoon in Tokyo
(pp. 171–76), and by GHQ labor official Theodore Cohen in his voluminous
Remaking Japan
(pp. 305, 336). Ozu is also described in the well-respected work
Yakuza
, by David Kaplan and Alec Dubro, pp. 50–51.

Historical background on the gangs is contained in
Ninkyo Dai Hyakka
(
The Encyclopaedia of Chivalry
), a massive, 810-page tome on Japanese gangsters.

A NOTE ON GANG CHARACTER

The
Ninkyo Dai Hyakka
noted that activities such as loan sharking, prostitution and narcotics were considered beneath the dignity of a true prewar
bakuto
and delineated a Gamblers’ Code of Behavior (pp. 62–81), which included the following instructions: Obey the
oyabun
and other superiors in all matters. Never reveal the secrets of the gang. Always be ready to defend the honor of the gang and never hesitate to put your life on the line, either in fights with other gangs or the police. Train every morning in the martial arts and learn to ignore pain. When you fight, always fight with someone important; never engage in a fight with an opponent who is outnumbered and never appeal to the police for help. Never sleep with a woman belonging to a fellow gang member and stay away from so-called straight women; if you must have a woman, buy one. Always keep your composure while drinking. Never sit with one knee drawn up, and if you commit a misdeed and have to apologize, do it with actions, not words. The encyclopedia also features an old yakuza poem:

Men who forget shame
,

Who dishonor their face

Are not worthy of belonging
.

Know shame
,

Keep your face while knowing

shame

Stake your life on your face
.

The collaboration of the gangs and the Tokyo municipal government during the war and immediate postwar era is described by Wildes in
Typhoon
(see Chapter 16, ‘Underground Empire’, pp. 171–80).

It should be noted here that although Tokyo entered the war with 5 million residents, which made it the largest city in the world, it finished it with only 1 million, as most of the population had moved to the countryside. It took some years for the population to reach its prewar level.

The 45,000 street stall figure is from a special dispatch issued by the International News Service, November 25, 1947.

The outdoor markets as Japan’s first experiment in democracy is discussed by Honda in
Kizu
(p. 138).

The informal survey of the residents at the Nomura Hotel was taken by Jim Blessin, an ex-Navy enlisted man who later became the hotel’s manager.

The establishment of the RAA, the encounter of the first Army ground patrol in Tokyo, and the workings of the International Palace were described in some detail by Cohen in
Remaking Japan
, pp. 125–26; by Associated Press correspondent Mark Gayn in
Japan Diary
, pp. 232–234; and by Wildes in
Typhoon
, p. 328. The experiences of the MAG 44 advance party were described in interviews with the author by First Sergeant Nick Zappetti, who led the excursion. Zappetti was also a sometime patron of the International Palace. ‘Hooker Alley’ was described by Adachi and Blessin. After talking to veterans of the Occupation, it sometimes seemed as though the sole purpose of the whole undertaking was the sexual gratification of the invaders.

A NOTE ABOUT PROSTITUTION

The world’s oldest profession had always been legal in Japan. In fact, Japanese brothels were among the most extensive in the world, with thousands of young girls sold into the life each year by their impoverished parents, some as young as age twelve. A prewar tally of individuals working in brothels in Japan exceeded 52,000 (see John Gunther,
Inside Asia
). Prostitution was considered a kind of art form in some circles in which ladies of the night would tattoo the names of their favorite clients on their thighs. It was also a serious business, without the stigma attached to it in some countries of the West. Prostitution only became illegal in Japan after the Americans arrived. The anti-prostitution law, passed in 1948, but not promulgated until 1958, gave rise to a whole host of substitute enterprises, such as
torukoburo
(Turkish baths) and
osawariba
(touch bars), which served as a cover for the real business of sex for money. In the late 1980s, after several complaints by the Turkish Embassy in Japan, the term
Soapland
came into use and gradually replaced the term
toruko
.

RAA establishments, it should be noted, were equal opportunity purveyors of pleasure. They provided their services to anyone, regardless of race, creed or color. It was only later that their proprietors learned prejudice from white American soldiers, who taught them about segregation. (A constant feature of life outside US military bases in Japan over the years was the existence of white-only and black-only bars.)

The growth in illicit commerce was described by Occupation eyewitnesses Roger Suddith, Ernie Solomon and Thomas L. Blakemore in interviews with the author.

Ozu was described as the ‘worst criminal in Japan’ by Wildes (
Typhoon
, p. 175).

The $8 million figure was quoted by Wildes (
Typhoon
, p. 3), who wrote that during the first year of the Occupation it seemed impossible to find an American who had not been approached with some sort of deal by Japanese. New York Times correspondent Russell Brines, in
MacArthur’s Japan
, pp. 293–95, reported that the Army lost ‘at least $70 million on illegal marketing’ in the first eight months of the Occupation, the time during which troops could legally convert yen into dollars. Another good account of Occupation-era corruption appears in Mark Gayn’s
Japan Diary
. The books of both Wildes (
Typhoon
, p. 36) and Gayn (
Japan Diary
, pp. 124–25, 178, 245–47, 262–63, 304–5, 307, 309–20) contain extensive descriptions of Akira Ando, as does Kaplan and Dubro’s
Yakuza
, pp. 49–50.

Kades’s press conference was held on November 10, 1947. In it he noted, ‘A vast and insidious network of feudal forces was undermining American democratic policy.’ Later, a GHQ officer in the Public Safety Division went so far as to warn that the ‘entire political, economic and cultural life of Japan is at the mercy of gangster groups’ (Wildes,
Typhoon
, p. 179). A detailed description of the ‘underground government’ was contained in a special report released by the International News Service on November 25, 1947. Also
Mo Hitotsu No Showa Shi
(
1
) (
One More History of Showa: I
), written by Professor Hidehiko Ushijima, contains a comprehensive discussion of the underground government in its introductory pages.

The effects of the GHQ crackdown were discussed by Wildes (
Typhoon
, pp. 171–80) and in
MacArthur’s Japan
by Brines, who wrote, ‘Criminal identification units devoted most of their efforts to large scale operations; several black market rings, feeding on stolen army supplies, were smashed but the battle was endless … the easy profits too alluring. Controlled black marketing continued almost openly, therefore, with each participant aware he was risking heavy penalties’ (p. 294).

The history of corruption in Japan is delineated in
Political Bribery in Japan,by
Richard H. Mitchell. Also see
Jitsuryoku Nihon Oshoku Shi
(
A History of Japanese Corruption: An Authentic Account
), by Tetsuro Muroboshi, (which describes several dozen scandals that occurred between 1872 and 1963 involving many of Japan’s leading statesmen and financiers, few of whom, incidentally, were ever tried or convicted). The Showa Denko scandal was described in Mitchell,
Political Bribery
, pp. 100–106; in Wildes,
Typhoon
, pp. 160, 164; and William Chapman,
Inventing Japan
, pp. 49–50. (Also see Karl Dixon, ‘Japan’s Lockheed Scandal: Structural Corruption’,
Pacific Community
, January 1977.)

Most studies of corruption in Japan compare the political sector unfavorably with the well-educated civil service bureaucracy, which actually runs the country
on a day-to-day basis and which has a somewhat better reputation for honesty and integrity.

A NOTE ABOUT THE VICKERS – SIEMENS SCANDAL

The Siemens affair was originally discovered by a Tokyo Thought Police agent who inadvertently stumbled upon it while pursuing a Mitsui Bussan trading house employee on another matter. During his investigation he found that a representative of the German company installing wireless equipment for the Navy was also blackmailing the Japanese manager of said company over the bribery. The agent filed his report to his superior and, soon after, a Mitsui executive advised him that the German had returned to Berlin and the matter had been settled. A series of secret meetings followed, involving the Japanese prime minister, the minister of the navy, the minister of justice, the German ambassador, and a man from Siemens, after which instructions were passed down to the prosecutor’s office and the police board not to pursue the affair any further. (The PM, Gombei Yamamoto, was an ex-Navy admiral.) The police agent was instructed by his superior to keep his mouth shut and visited by thugs on more than one occasion to encourage him to keep that silence.

But early in 1914 the Siemens representative, on trial in Berlin for stealing company documents, testified that Siemens had been bribing the Japanese government, including certain high-ranking officials in the Ministry of the Navy, to win contracts. With the news out, the Japanese police were forced to act. Two vice admirals and three top Mitsui executives were arrested, and the prime minister’s cabinet collapsed. The Siemens clerk for transactions was also arrested but did not go to trial because someone strangled him in the detention house (Mitchell, p. 20). There was public rioting, and shrill editorials decried the loss of national confidence in the government. (As one cynical observer put it, however, ‘“national confidence” was a journalistic exaggeration since the incidents … were only the most conspicuous symptoms of a disease which affected the entire body politic … a serious condition in which the several organs functioned independently [and exuberantly] without regard for the well-being of the body as a whole’ (John Roberts,
Mitsui
, pp. 186–88).

The GHQ crackdown on crime by its own personnel is described in Cohen,
Remaking Japan
, pp. 128–31. An author interview with Occupation businessman Jack Dinken, whose company helped rearm the MPD, confirmed the account of the disappearance of the original armory and provided additional background on the black markets.

THE BANK OF TEXAS

Several contemporaries of Zappetti confirmed facts about his black market activities, among them, fellow CPC workers James L. Adachi and Reid Irvine, Jim Blessin (friend and manager of the Nomura Hotel, where Zappetti stayed), and Dr Eugene Aksenoff. Aksenoff, a White Russian native of Manchuria who practiced medicine in Tokyo for more than half a century, provided further information on the workings of the black market, the Ginza-based smugglers of the era, and the White Russian members of Lansco, whom he knew well.

An unpublished manuscript of an interview with a one-time member of the Tosei-kai gang conducted in the early 1970s, when the gangster had relocated to Seoul, confirmed details of the illegal check and money order business on the Ginza during the years following the end of the war. (The manuscript was provided by journalist Hiroshi Sasaki.)

Adachi summed up the general opinion of Zappetti among the Occupationnaires (as some of them liked to call themselves) when he said, ‘He was a typical New York wop. He talked out of the side of his mouth and he bragged about his black market activities. A lot of people played the black market in those days, but quietly, on a small scale, and didn’t talk about it. But not Nick. He had everyone scared. We all thought he was dangerous.’ Added Blessin, ‘Nick was flashy, a fast mover, and disdainful of people. There was talk about him and the gangs. He was involved in things we didn’t want to be part of.’ Said Aksenoff, ‘He was well known and he was a little scary in those days.’

Zappetti was deported after being fingered by a teenaged Ueno black market courier who had been caught
in flagrante delicto
by a conscientious Japanese undercover detective and enticed to talk by a princely seventy-five-cents-per-day CID government witness fee. Before leaving, Zappetti said good-bye to his wife and kids and then accosted his accuser, a pouty-looking anorectic youth, in the elevator of the Teikoku Building, a seven-story, prewar, marble and stone structure facing Hibiya Park and the Palace grounds, where the CID was located. He grabbed the youth in a hammerlock and took him to the roof. With the charred skyline of Tokyo serving as backdrop, Zappetti methodically went to work. He broke the young man’s nose, cracked several ribs and closed both eyes, leaving his victim lying in a crumpled, bloody heap on the concrete. ‘That’s what we do to squealers back in New York,’ he said.

It was the general consensus within the US Embassy proper in Tokyo that, while in New York, Zappetti had struck a deal with the Mafia to look after their interests in Japan, in return for which they helped him get a visa and passport. That was what Barry Nemcoff, US Embassy press official in Tokyo from 1963 to 1968, believed. And it was the belief of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, although nobody could prove it.

Crime journalist Rekichi Sumiya confirmed details about the Ginza gangs of that era, the Sumiyoshi and the Tosei-kai, as did the aforementioned ex-Toseikai soldier in his unpublished memoirs. The sale of a fake $30,000 ‘Chase Bank’ check is a matter of public record (as is the three-year prison term served by the seller).
Asahi Shimbun
journalist Shigeo Fujita confirmed details about Huff and the Evergreen.