CHAPTER SIX

CHERRY BLOSSOMS AND SAMURAI

Tommy Pitera loved Japan. He especially liked how polite the people were to one another, their thoughtful approach to food and art—particularly their mind-set regarding martial arts. Here was a society, a culture, a way of life, that had been founded on the samurai, the ultimate machismo culture. Though the samurai were long gone and forgotten, their way of life was still very much a part of modern Japanese thinking. In a very real sense, the Japanese’s success in business, their world domination of business, had to do with the samurai approach to life, to work. The Japanese thought of themselves as a superior people; they thought of themselves as smarter, wiser, and more resilient. Through the consistent application of intellectual pursuits, higher education, and the samurai way of thinking, they believed they could conquer the world.

The world, as such, got a foul-bitter taste of the samurai, warlike thinking when the Japanese attacked China’s Manchurian province in 1931. We witnessed a barbarism on an unprecedented scale, unspeakable torture and rape and murder the norm. Arrogantly, in broad daylight, in squares all over Manchuria, shaking, quivering Chinese were beheaded. This was not done in secret, forgotten places or prisons. It was done defiantly, openly, for all the world to see and know. Chinese women were systematically turned into prostitutes to satisfy the Japanese soldiers’ cravings for sex. However, there was no quid pro quo. The women received nothing but brutal rape after brutal rape after brutal rape. The Japanese soldiers felt they had an inherent right, that they were samurai and they could take and do whatever they wanted with whomever they pleased. It became a known fact that the Japanese soldiers turned their libidos on the young; the raping of prepubescent girls and boys, the sodomizing of them, was the norm, brutally real.

The great expatriate writer Pearl S. Buck documented in her unforgettable novel Dragon Seed the destruction of a Chinese family at the hands of Japanese soldiers, and how a seven-year-old boy in the family was repeatedly raped by a group of soldiers. This young boy grew up to be a fierce partisan fighter.

There was no rule of law. No country interceded, stepped in, and tried to stop the daily brutality. Year after year it went on, fueled by the twisted interpretation of the samurai way of thinking. In 1937, Japan attacked China on a full scale—all-out war. Unchecked, unchallenged, now the Japanese conquered the whole of China, a huge country with an enormous population. The Japanese gleefully raped and stole and pilfered as they went. They were like a plague of locusts that left nothing alive in its wake. All was dead.

The Japanese began to believe that they were—invincible. That they were above the laws of men. This, fused with the samurai belief system, made a very dangerous foe. They were without conscience, remorseless, took great pride in their brutality, in their indifference to life.

When, on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, they did so truly believing that they could, surely would, beat America at war. Again, because of the samurai way of thinking, they believed that the Americans were soft, that they would not fight, that they would quickly give up and Japan would control North America. The Japanese obviously underestimated not only America’s resources but America’s willingness to fight. In reality, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they awakened a “sleeping giant” they awakened a fighting machine the likes of which the world had never known. As the two countries fought horrific battles all over the South Pacific, it became obvious that because of the samurai code, the Japanese would never give up, that they would fight to the death. An outgrowth of the samurai culture was the kamikazes—fighter pilots who gladly steered their planes into enemies’ ships. They were able to do devastating damage to Americans. The damage did not come about so much because of the bomb-laden planes the Japanese flew as because of the mind-set of the kamikaze pilots, who gleefully gave up their lives. Fighting an enemy only too happy to die was a difficult adversary. In Washington, it was decided that the only way to end the war would be to drop atomic bombs, for it was commonly believed, understood, that the Japanese would never give up unless they absolutely had to.

The warlike mind-set, the obsession the Japanese had, would not allow them to give up. Thus, Americans dropped two atomic bombs, one on Nagasaki and one on Hiroshima, quite literally blowing the samurai belief system into oblivion. Faced with this overwhelming, devastating power, the Japanese finally surrendered—unconditionally.

After World War II, a new way of thinking swept over Japan. The Japanese became a society of pacifists. They had no army; they wanted no army. They became a world power again not through military prowess but through financial genius. However, the samurai culture again reared its head. Now it was applied more toward business rather than war. For many Japanese, it was still something to be revered and proud of. The direction of this belief system now took a new path; it became more part of individuals’ and corporations’ mantra rather than an army’s. Martial arts schools opened and flourished across Japan. Japanese martial artists became world famous, held in high esteem and thought of as rock stars.

It was into this modern take on the samurai culture, into this world, that Tommy Pitera entered when he landed in Japan. What drew Pitera to this place, to this mind-set and culture, was the steely, stoic, warlike approach to life the samurai not only lived but embraced with all their being. In a sense, the samurai warrior was a mirror reflection of old-school mafiosi—respect, honor, bravery were all intricately woven between these two Spartan, warrior-like mentalities. Pitera thought little about what the Japanese did to the Chinese in World War II. What drew him to Japan, what drew him to the samurai way of life, was the Japan of old, the Japan where men lived and died by the sword. He was here to study martial arts. He was here to make the world of the samurai warrior his. He would become a samurai warrior; he would be fearless and remorseless and unbeatable. Invincible. The killer in Tommy Pitera had flown halfway around the world to find a comfortable place to develop, grow, learn. Here, the dragon would find nourishment and sustenance—become a dangerous creature of the night.

Wide-eyed and innocent, though with war on his mind, Pitera showed up at the martial arts school in Tokyo, Japan. He studied under Japan’s revered sensei, Hiroshi Masumi. Every day Tommy showed up at class and worked out with a fervor and dedication that was religious. Seven days a week, he fought with his hands, his feet, and various Japanese weapons: tonfa, nunchucks, bs, and katanas. His muscles, which had been toned already from his years of training, became rock hard. His facial features changed, too. His cheekbones became higher. The teenage fat melted off his face; his face became more angular and defined. His stick-straight black hair grew even longer and contrasted with his blue-gray eyes, making him an unsettling sight.

Though his effeminate voice stayed with him, here, however, nobody made fun of him. Here, Pitera was respected and thought of as a champion athlete, fighter. Pitera ate mostly fish and rice and seaweed and there was little fat on his body. For entertainment he read voraciously, books about war, martial arts—how to kill. He read about where to stab and slash and cut for the maximum effect. He studied killing people the way a dedicated student involved in physics studies numbers. He became obsessed with not only winning every fight he fought but winning decisively, irreversibly—killing his enemies.

For the first time in his life, it seemed like he had discovered a place in the world where he fit in. When it was time to go, he wasn’t ready to leave and instead went to work in a chopsticks factory to help underwrite his stay and make ends meet. His mother and her sister Angelina Bugowski came over to visit him. They were both impressed by the change in his physical appearance, how he had matured, how much he had grown, and how much he thought of the Japanese culture and people, his grounded sensibility. Now when Pitera fought in tournaments, he always won. Even his sensei shied away from him in fights. When he hit people, he broke bones, traumatized flesh and muscle and sinew; he left his opponents covered in black-and-blues—contusions.

Like all championship fighters, Pitera inevitably began to think of himself as invincible. He no longer walked, he strutted, head high, shoulders back, his chest out…defiant. Now it was he who looked down on people; now he was an alpha male, a predator, a burgeoning dragon.

Tommy Pitera became so absorbed in his life in martial arts, in the culture of Japan, that the days went by unusually fast. In no time, the young man had been there some twenty-seven months. He had learned everything he could, developed himself into a fighting machine. His muscles were much like those of a Thoroughbred horse; it looked as though steel cables were alive under his flesh.

Still, he was not sure what he wanted to do with his life. Could he make a living at martial arts? Perhaps he could open a martial arts school, though he was not the type that had either the patience or inclination to teach. He was, by nature, self-centered and was not apt to teach what he had learned through hard work, blood, and sweat.

Tommy Pitera knew it was time to go home, time for him to return to Brooklyn. Even he, back then, there in Japan, had no idea he would end up one of the most feared assassins the Mafia had ever known—a capo in the Bonanno crime family, a killer who would take a place of honor—infamy—in the Mafia’s infamous hall of fame.