Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Fiction: Welcome To Japan, Davis-San

Below is my story about an American sailor visiting Japan, circa 1971.

The story is a chapter from Olongapo, a crime novel that I hope to publish.

The story first appeared in American Crime Magazine.

Welcome to Japan, Davis-San

By Paul Davis

In May of 1971, the Kitty Hawk was temporarily relieved from combat operations on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam by another aircraft carrier and the Kitty Hawk set sail for Sasebo, Japan for a scheduled R&R period.

The Japanese had been my father’s bitter enemy, as he served as an Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) frogman in the Pacific during WWII. The old chief participated in some grueling and bloody battles on the Japanese-held beaches and islands, yet he held no rancor against the Japanese. Judging from his letters to me, he appeared to be as excited as I was about my visit to the “Land of the Rising Sun.”

I became particularly interested in Japan in 1965 when I read Ian Fleming’s James Bond thriller, You Only Live Twice. I was fascinated by Fleming’s characters and plot and his take on the cultural differences between the West and Japan.

I prepared for my visit to Japan by re-reading You Only Live Twice, as well as re-reading the chapter on Japan in my ever-ready "travel bible,” an old paperback edition of Ian Fleming’s travelogue, Thrilling Cities.

Shortly after the Kitty Hawk docked in Sasebo, I and other sailors headed towards the city’s area known as “Paradise Alley,’ where the bars catered to American sailors. I went ashore with Salvatore Lorino and Mike Hunt, and we visited one of the bars on Paradise Alley, and we drank and danced with the Japanese bar girls. After a couple of hours, Mike Hunt suggested that we go and have what Americans called a Hotzi bath and massage. We left the bar and visited a nearby public bathhouse called a Sento.

We first sat in a sauna, where we sweated out the alcohol from our bodies. Then, after a rigorous shower, we slipped into the steaming hot public bath. After a while, we left the bath and went into another room for a massage. There were no sexual “happy endings” here, but the massage was very satisfying.

My massage was administered by a slight and pretty Japanese girl who had the strength of a sumo wrestler. She squeezed, pressed, pounded and applied karate-type blows to my body. When we left the Sento, I felt so good that I thought I could leap over a tall building.

It was a beautiful spring day, so we walked around and ended up on a narrow street. I spotted a small store that could have been an antique shop or a pawn shop. I had no idea what kind of store it was as the signs were in Japanese. But what I spied in the shop window quickly drew me in. In the center of the window was an old and glorious set of Katana swords, more commonly known as Samurai swords. I didn’t know much about Katana swords at the time, other than the cursory knowledge I gleaned from the books I read, but these swords looked authentic to me. I entered the shop and bowed to the proprietor, an elderly man, and I pulled out a handful of yen and pointed towards the swords in the window.

His response was in Japanese, spoken softly as he continued to bow up and down. I bowed back, having read somewhere that the more you bow, the more humble and polite you are. Of course, the proprietor was always two bows ahead of me, as he had a lot more practice at this than I. Thankfully, a young woman customer spoke English and she politely informed me that the swords were not for sale. She explained that the swords belonged to the proprietor’s ancestors. I bowed again, twice, and quickly bowed out of the store.

We spent the rest of the day and evening in a bar, and while most Americans were drinking beer or whisky, I was drinking Sake, Japanese rice wine. There is a saying that notes the man drinks the first three cups of Sake, and the next three cups of Sake drink the man.

I danced with a beautiful Japanese girl named Kimora, and she then sat with me at our table. Kimora had long dark hair, a beautiful face and a lean and alluring body. I especially loved her soft and sexy voice when she spoke Japanese, and I found her broken English to be both funny and cute. She kissed me after every swallow of the whiskey I bought her.

Lorino noticed four stern-looking Japanese men in dark suits siting with four women at a table in the corner. Lorino knew I was an aspiring crime writer and something of a serious student of crime, so he asked me, “Hey, those guys in the corner are Jap gangsters, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Yakuza, I believe,” I replied.

Lorino leaned over to the girl at his side and asked her to send a round of drinks to the yakuza criminals. He told her to tell them that he wanted to meet them.

“Tell ‘em I’m Cosa Nostra.

“Cusi who?”

“American Mafia.”

She got up and went over to the mama-san and spoke to her and then returned to Lorino’s side. A waitress delivered a tray of drinks to the men and the mama-san whispered to one of the men. The man waved to Lorino and beckoned him to come over.

“C’mon, Paulie. Let’s go over.”

“I’ll pass. You go.”

“Hey, you got the black suit and shirt. You look like a mob guy. They’ll love ya.”

I was curious, so I walked over with a strutting Lorino.

One of the yakuza spoke English and he translated for Lorino. He made the other hoodlums laugh with his translations. I felt we were being mocked, and I told Lorino that we should go. Lorino brushed me off and then pulled out a wad of U.S. dollars. He said he wanted to buy shabu. The Japanese, like the Filipinos, called crystal meth shabu.

The yakuza members stopped laughing. The one who spoke English conferred with his associates and then turned back to Lorino. He took out a piece of paper and wrote the name of a bar and a person’s name in English and added some Japanese characters. He passed the slip of paper to Lorino.

“Go to this bar and ask for this person,” the yakuza member said. “Hand him this note and he will help you.”

“Thanks,” Lorino said. “Youse guys are cool.”

We went back to our table and Lorino said “Let’s go.”

“You go, I want to stay here and drink and dance with Kimora.”

“This will only take a half hour. I need you as a back-up. The girl will be here when we get back.”

Reluctantly, I went with him.

We took a cab to the bar and walked in. We were the only Americans there and we were given dirty looks by some of the customers who appeared to be yakuza gangsters. Lorino, unfazed at our reception and uber confident as usual, walked up boldly to the bar and showed the note to the bartender. The bartender, without a word, motioned over a young Japanese thug. The thug read the note and told Lorino in English to meet him outside in the alley.

Out in the alley, the young yakuza thug, accompanied by another young thug, asked for the money. Lorino handed over the U.S. dollars. The young thug put the money in his pants pocket and then pulled out a knife.

The thug smiled.

“So, this is how it’s going to be,” Lorino said, smiling back.

He looked sideways at me and said, “You believe this shit?” and then he delivered a swift kick to the thug’s left knee. As the thug buckled from the kick, Lorino stepped in and threw an uppercut that dropped the thug. I began to step in towards the advancing second thug, but Lorino whipped out a small semi-automatic pistol. Seeing the gun, the second thug stepped back.

The second thug helped the first thug up from the street. The first thug grinned, picked up his knife and put it in his pocket. And then he bowed. He took out a plastic bag out of his pocket and handed it to Lorino.

Lorino bowed back. He wet his finger and dipped the finger in the bag. He pulled out his finger and held it to his nose and inhaled it. His head jolted back, and he laughed.

“Very good shit,” he said and bowed.

The two thugs bowed and went back into the bar.

“Where did you get the gun?” I asked.

“Olongapo. Where else?”

Lorino and I took a cab to our hotel and once in our room, we snorted a couple of lines of the shabu. Lorino hid the bulk of the shabu but kept some of it on him for us to use later while we were out. I wanted to go back to the first bar we visited and drink and dance with Kimora. I became even more talkative than usual, but Lorino reacted differently to the meth. He became quiet and introspective.

We walked to the bar, and went in. Lorino gave the yakuza hoods a thumbs up.

The English-speaking yakuza explained what the upright thumb meant, and they all laughed and raised their own thumbs up.

After many cups of Sake, I needed to get some air, and I left the bar. Lorino followed me up the street where we saw a small restaurant with an open front. The smell coming from the restaurant was enticing. We entered the restaurant, and I stepped up to the counter. The menus were banners hanging from the ceiling, and of course they were written in Japanese. A man sitting next me to me was eating steamed vegetables and as I liked the smell, I motioned to the waitress that this was what we wanted. Although I was not big on vegetables, steamed or otherwise, after consuming the Sake, I thought this was a fantastic meal.

I pulled out my money and having forgotten the rate of exchange for Japanese yen to American dollars, I gave the waitress a stack of yen. As we walked down the street, I heard someone yelling, “American-San! American-San!” I turned and saw the waitress coming towards me. She bowed and I bowed back. She bowed again and handed me some yen. I gathered that I gave her too much money for the meal. I bowed and shook my head as I handed her back the bills. She bowed twice and would not accept the offered bills. She bowed again twice and turned and walked back towards the restaurant.

“Can you image any other place in Southeast Asia where this would happen?” I asked Lorino. “Only in Japan.”

“In Olongapo, they would come out and cut our throats for the rest of the money,” Lorino said and laughed.

We headed back to the bar, where I danced and drank more Sake with Kimora. After drinking much Sake, I ended my night in a hotel room with the incredibly beautiful Kimora.

The following day I left Sasebo and took a train with Hunt to Nagasaki.

Lorino stayed in Sasebo and partied with his new yakuza friends.