Tokyo Underworld (40 page)

A longtime Tokyo-based accountant from England, William Salter, provided information on the Hotel New York.

OCCUPATION LEGACY

The 10 percent estimate appeared in the leading weekly
Shukan Bunshun
on October 4, 1979, in an article entitled ‘
M-Shigen No Ura No Shinjitsu’
(‘The Truth behind the M-Fund’). The $200 million figure was quoted by Wildes in
Typhoon
, p. 168.

The existence of a secret slush fund, known as the ‘M-Fund’ in many circles, has been the topic of much discussion over the years. Some say it was created with the cooperation of the US government. A good summary of all the gossip and speculation on the subject is the above M-Fund article, which was actually a three-part series appearing in the
Shukan Bunshun
, October 4 and 25 and November 1, 1979.

There is a wealth of excellent books on the Occupation as a whole. Among them are Cohen,
Remaking Japan;
Wildes,
Typhoon in Tokyo;
Brines,
MacArthur’s Japan;
and Gayn,
Japan Diary
.

SCAP’s demotion of Emperor Hirohito from his previous post as a god under the Shinto state religion to figurehead was made abundantly clear in the first meeting between the Emperor and General MacArthur. The Emperor had arrived in full regalia, only to be greeted by MacArthur in an open-necked shirt with no tie, no medals and no campaign ribbons. The Japanese put great stock in symbols, and to see news photos of the two men together – the informally dressed MacArthur, hands in his back pockets, towering over the Emperor, who was standing at attention in his best uniform displaying all his decorations – was an enormous shock. The Sun God looked like an ordinary little man trying to appear important while standing next to someone much taller. The scene conveyed more than any SCAP declaration ever could have. It was clear beyond the shadow of a doubt who the most powerful figure in the country was.

The general consensus of the people I interviewed was that the Occupation GI was a much-better-mannered animal than his successors. The former came from a poor Depression-era background. He made a decent living in the Army and did not want to lose it.

Especially offensive in the list of new restrictions imposed in late 1947 was the
issuance of a new SCAPIN (SCAP Instruction), ‘Fraternization without conversation is not fraternization’, which, in effect, was a bow to the impossibility of controlling the sexual urges of so many GIs. It showed Japanese that Americans could be every bit as bureaucratically ludicrous as anyone else. Under SCAP Order 3-11, an American caught
talking
to the Japanese girl he had just slept with could be court-martialed for violating fraternization laws. Moreover, the girl could be arrested by the Japanese police for ‘endangering the solemn mission of SCAP’. Only married couples like Nick Zappetti and his wife were immune from such prosecution.

The activities of the American Council on Japan have been documented in great detail by the late University of Maine scholar Howard Schoenberger, who published a number of articles on the subject. See, for example, ‘The Japan Lobby in American Diplomacy, 1947–1952’,
Pacific Historical Review
46, no. 3, August 1977, pp. 327–59; and ‘Zaibatsu Dissolution and the American Restoration of Japan’,
Bulletin of Concerned Asia Scholars
, September 1, 1973. Also see Glen Davis and John G. Roberts,
An Occupation without Troops
. GHQ labor official Theodore Cohen had several unkind words to say about the activities of ACJ lawyer James Lee Kauffman in
Remaking Japan
. Sources for Rockefeller-related businesses in Japan included ‘An Untitled Essay, The Rockefellers in Japan’, a thesis submitted to John Dower in the Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 1974, and
The Rockefellers
, by Collier and Horowitz. On March 15, 1994, NHK aired ‘The Japan Lobby’, a documentary on the ACJ.

At the end of the Occupation, there were 3,760 American men and 453 American women employees in the GHQ, a discrepancy that helped to account for the large number of marriages between Japanese women and American men.

2. OCCUPATION HANGOVER

The two drownings and other ‘unpleasant occurrences’ (including the robbery of a Fuji Bank branch in Tokyo in 1952 by three GIs armed with shotguns and rifles) were described in the ‘
Gaikokujin Makaritoru’
[The Foreigners Have Their Own Way],
Shukan Yomiuri
, October 10, 1954, pp. 4–11. The article ran with a two-frame cartoon: the first depicted wartime GIs dropping bombs on Tokyo; the next showed peacetime GIs terrorizing peace-loving citizens with spears and gleefully picking their pockets with fishing hooks. The Lucky Dragon incident is described in David Halberstam’s
The Fifties
, pp. 345–47.

Voice of America excerpts and other related material are from Ushijima,
Mo Hitotsu no Showa Shi (1)
(pp. 110–16).

Descriptions of Tokyo in the immediate post-Occupation era came from Hal Drake, Tom Scully and Richard Berry, who all worked in the
Stars and Stripes
Roppongi office at the time. Lawyer Tom Blakemore, who lived on the economy, also provided his recollections, as did Richard Roa, then an Army private.

Tokyo-based commercial lawyer Ray Bushell was a close acquaintance of Ted Lewin and provided background material on the gambling czar, including the $25,000 bribe that Lewin confided to him. Descriptions of the Mandarin were provided by Jim Blessin and Jack Dinken, who were occasional visitors. For additional material on Lewin, the author relied on interviews with Jim Phillips, a longtime Tokyo resident and aircraft consultant, who knew him, as well as ‘
Gaikokujin Makari Doru’
, and
Shukan Yomiuri
, October 10, 1954, and
Mo Hitotsu no Showa Shi
(
1
).

Longtime Tokyo entertainment columnist ‘Shig’ Fujita, who designed the logo for the first Latin Quarter, jointly owned by Lewin and Yoshio Kodama, and did public relations work for the Mandarin as well, provided background, as did acquaintance Dr Eugene Aksenoff. Aksenoff also provided a description of the time in the mid-50s he operated on one Jason Lee, a Korean-American ‘business associate’ of Lewin’s. Lee had been shot in the side and he demanded Aksenoff remove the bullet in the doctor’s Tokyo clinic without using an anesthetic; he did not want to be rendered vulnerable to enemy attack. Lee later gained notoriety when he was arrested in Monte Carlo for gambling with loaded dice at the famous casino, a crime for which he was fined $100,000 and deported. Lee was later shot four times in the chest in Chicago by mob rivals.

A NOTE ABOUT GAMBLING

Gambling has been illegal for centuries in Japan. The feudal lords of centuries past banned it because they did not want citizens making money too easily. Tough anti-gambling laws were a way of controlling the populace on the one hand and instilling a strict work ethic on the other, a philosophy followed by modern-day bureaucrats in Japan. However, the old
daimyo
often held private gambling sessions for their own amusement and called in the local
bakuto
to help organize them. Although the anti-gambling laws remained in effect into the modern era, public betting on horse racing and motorboat racing appeared after the war as municipally sanctioned activities, providing a much-needed source of income for local governments, which split the take with private entrepreneurs. (Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of this postwar phenomenon was a man named Ryoji Sasakawa, an eccentric right-wing activist and one-time Mussolini supporter who had spent time in Sugamo Prison with Yoshio Kodama and Nobusuke Kishi. His Japan Motorboat Racing Association, which put on the races, made Sasakawa a multimillionaire, enabled him to build his own private army and claim, in 1974,
that he was the ‘world’s wealthiest fascist.’) The rise of this type of public gambling caused much hand-wringing among purists, who saw it as evidence that the moral fabric of Japanese society was being torn asunder.

For the police raids on the Mandarin and their aftermath, the author relied on the following newspaper reports:
Yomiuri Shimbun
, July 17, 1952;
Asahi Shim-bun
, July 18, 1952, March 17, March 31, and July 18, 1953, and August 3, 1954. The Lewin swindle was reported in Shinsuke Itakagi,
Kono Jiyuto
[
This Liberal Party
]. Vol. 2, pp. 214–15.

Descriptions of the Latin Quarter were provided by Ushijima, Blessin and Bushell.

Itagaki also reported that Lewin was being ‘manipulated’ by the FBI, under the control of a Colonel Diamond, who was representing the FBI in Tokyo, at the same time Lewin was running the Latin Quarter in a consortium with former Japanese nationalists, whom he had met during the war in Manila, agents of the GHQ’s G-2 Intelligence Unit, and agents from the CIA. Ushijima reported that during the war, when Lewin managed the Riveria Casino, he had become involved in the opium trade and had maintained a business relationship with the Japanese military – specifically, with the ultranationalist leader Yoshio Kodama, who ran one of the most effective wartime procurement machines in the Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Itagaki reported that, after the war, Lewin hooked up with US intelligence, helping agents trace money-laundering operations in Asia and uncover Communist operatives working in the region – all while he was running a gun-smuggling ring for Japanese underworld and right-wing groups. Lewin’s interpreter, Carey Yamamoto, was associated with the Tosei-kai.

Another Tokyo club Lewin owned was the Golden Gate in Azabu, which was a hangout for pilots of the CIA-run Civil Air Transport, an airline service running troops between Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and which was famous for its backroom, high-stakes poker games.

For the history and background of Japanese pachinko, the author relied on the excellent book
Winning Pachinko: The Game of Japanese Pinball
, by Eric C. Sedensky.

The arrest of Vladimir Boborov and his accomplices, including Leo Yuskoff, was a major story in the
Asahi Shimbun
, March 17, 1953. See ‘
Kokusai Tobaku’
[‘International Gambling’]. Also see the March 31, 1953, and July 18, 1953, editions for follow-up articles on the deportation. (Also
Asahi Shimbun
, February 3, 1954.)

GORGEOUS MAC

There is a wealth of material in Japanese on Rikidozan and the professional wrestling boom that hit Japan in the 1950s. One of the best is the biography of Rikidozan written by Eiji Oshita,
Eikyu No Rikidozan [Rikidozan Forever]
. Another valuable source was the 700-plus-page history of pro wrestling,
Nihon Proresu Zen-shi
(
Baseball Magazine Co
.). Also useful were
Rikidozan
by Noboru Kurita and
Yobo No Media
(
Ambitious Media
), by prize-winning author Inose Naoki, as well as two hour-long film documentaries available on videotape:
Rikidozan to Sono Jidai
, Bungei Shunju, and
Rikidozan
, Pony, Canyon.

The Indians-as-bad-guys quote is from Hidehiko Ushijima,
Mo Hitotsu No Showa Shi (1); Shinso Kairyu No Otoko: Rikidozan
[
One More Showa History, I; Rikidozan: Man of Deep Currents
].

IMPERIAL HOTEL DIAMOND ROBBERY/TOKYO JAIL

The diamond robbery at the Imperial Hotel was widely covered in the Japanese media. Magazine articles dealing with the robbery at length include ‘
Nokoru Hoseki Ten No Ikikata,’ Sunday Mainichi
, February 5, 1956, and ‘
Hoseki Goto ‘Gomenasai,’ Sunday Mainichi
, March 25, 1956.

MacFarland’s bizarre personality quirks and sexual preferences were attested to by Nick Zappetti and the
Sunday Mainichi
pieces. Raymond Bushell, who represented MacFarland after his arrest, also provided colorful accounts of MacFarland’s odd behavior.

MacFarland’s six-month hospitalization and insulin shock treatment were reported by the INS, March 22, 1956. His suicide attempts were reported by the INS, January 27, 1956. His indictment was covered by the
Mainichi Daily News
, February 8, 1956, and his confession, by AP, March 9, 1956. INS correspondent Leonard Saffir wrote several pieces on MacFarland, including the numerous suicide attempts in January and February 1956 (see ‘“I’m Crazy,” says Sick Jewel Thief’, INS, March 22, 1956).

On March 7, 1956, MacFarland issued a lengthy letter of apology to the court and sent a copy of it to the Kyodo Wire Service, which published it in full. The last paragraph is excerpted here:

I’m deeply sorry to the people I’ve wronged, to my own government for the embarrassment I’ve put upon them, and to you the Japanese people for my lack of respect for your laws and honor. I pray that the courts and you the people will allow me to stay and make my home here in Japan. I honestly feel that if this is allowed, my future actions will show that I was worthy of the consideration.

So I now ask you, the people, to have ‘Mercy on Me, a Fool.’

Humbly,
John M. MacFarland

MacFarland’s sentence was announced on May 27, 1956, in Tokyo District Court. See INS dispatch, May 27, 1956, and the AP report of May 28, 1956.

MacFarland’s apology was prompted perhaps by his learning of an interesting aspect of the Japanese criminal justice system, whereby truly repentant criminals come clean and admit guilt and get lenient treatment. (In fact, one-fourth of all criminals in any given year are sentenced merely to write ‘I’m sorry’ at the bottom of their confession.) In any event, in MacFarland’s case, it didn’t work.

MacFarland’s male paramour, who abetted MacFarland’s robbery, was identified by Zappetti and Bushell, MacFarland’s lawyer. Mori’s activities were described in the various media accounts in Japanese and English, but referred to only as ‘M’ at the time of the robbery because he was still under age. (In Japan, one reaches majority at age twenty.)

Shattuck was implicated in various news accounts (see INS, May 8, 1956, for example). Bushell was a witness to MacFarland’s face-to-face accusation of Shattuck, and Zappetti, who testified at Shattuck’s trial, maintained that Shattuck was framed. Bushell privately believed that Shattuck had really bought the jewels but then lied about it.