Time Machine: Nick Zappetti talks about the early years in Japan - Part 2

This interview with Nick Zappetti, the central figure in Tokyo Underworld, focuses on his activities in the years 1945-1956. Second in a two-part series.

Nick Zappetti: See, dollars at that time were maybe 480 or 520 yen for a dollar. But the (official) rate was 360. So you sell the dollar checks to somebody — some Japanese businessman who needs dollars, cuz they were tough to get in those days with all the restrictions — and they give you maybe 500 yen. And you give the shipping company maybe like 420, 430. You know, those were big checks and you can make 60 yen on a check per dollar; you’re talking about a lot of money. And, of course, we had a lot of fun those days.

Robert Whiting: C.F. Sharpe was a shipping company?

A: Yes, but don’t use that name. They’re still here, you know … So, anyway, we used to do that. 

Q: How long did this go on?

A:  A few years. And, of course, I graduated from that and I started writing phony dollar checks for 10% of the face value. And I signed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. I signed any fucking name. And I get 10% of the face value.

Q: Who were your customers?

A:  You know, yakuza would come over and want to buy a dollar check. He says I got a man who wants to buy a check for $3,000. I says, OK, I write it, I give him the check, I get 10% cash and I’m selling it to him because he has another buyer, somewhere who needs dollars, or who wants to sell to someone else. So I never meet the buyers down the line. I write the check, because I can write English. And the yakuza sells the check for 480 or 500 or some shit like that. We used Bank of America paper. Then we started writing checks on non-existent banks. We had these fucking checks on a bank in Texas but there was no such bank. 

We did other shit too. I remember one day we wound up with a lot of ball gum. You know the kind you put in a machine. We had thousands of pounds of it. We picked up. We went around trying to sell ballgum. We couldn’t sell ballgum. Japanese shopkeepers had never seen gumballs before. They didn’t like the colored dye coming of on their hands. They said the taste didn’t suit the Japanese. Also, we didn’t have any of the dispenser machines. Just boxes of ballgums.

So we hired a group of yakuza guys from the Tosei-kai on the Ginza to go around to all the people who didn’t want to buy the ballgum in Okachimachi. The Tosei-kai was the gang of ethnic Koreans. They were in a war with this Japanese gang the Sumiyoshi-kai for control of the city. They carried their .38’s around, with their knives and short swords. They had tattoos, bad teeth. They were some scary guys. We hired about four of them to go around town and get everyone they wanted to buy ballgum. And suddenly everybody says they want ballgum. So we created a market for people to buy ballgum. And we got rid of the fucking ballgum. We made a nice big fat profit on it. They bought it from us and they couldn’t sell it to anybody. We created a market. I’ll never forget that maneuver.