The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe | Hacker News Reader

The Last Gamble of Tokyo Joe

chicagomag.com

112 pointseffects21 comments

What a great story.

I don’t know why I read past the first couple of paragraphs — it’s not the kind of thing I usually care about — but it was gripping.

Agree, this was one of the most captivating pieces I've read in recent memory.

I think mob stories tend to be gripping. We, especially now so many years removed from the heyday, have a romantic idea about mobsters, always living on the edge. Sure they're on the wrong side of the law, but just barely and they usually keep the violence away from civilians (this is the romantic bit). Some mobsters are bad dudes, yeah, but some are regular Tokyo Joes thrown into a bad situation.

It's easy to take these seeds and blossom them into a tale about an anti-hero you can't help but root for, because you know how it usually ends for people in this situation (in the ground or behind bars), but you can't help but think, will it be different, just this one time?

I do not doubt that organized crime is a terrible institution. That said, I wonder how much more effective the labor movement in the United States would be if La Cosa Nostra ran labor unions still. Probably just my brain romanticizing the power of those who operated mafia families to be harnessed for good but I think it'd be a wonderful counterbalance to the power of the American oligarchy to have to negotiate with such a powerful violent force over labor issues. Labor seems to have lost all of it's teeth in it's negotiations. Imagine Bezos sitting across from mafia to negotiate peeing in bottles? lol

The era of mob control over the unions was pretty bad -- I remember living through it. The unions needed their backs broken to get cleaned up.

Naturally a certain political party seized the moment and tried to eradicate unions all together, sadly with some success. I hope the tide is turning away from that.

Organized crime does control the unions. There is no other way that hundreds of people get paid thousands a day without there being work for them as happened in NYC.

It's just that they got better about allocation of money. Union leaders aren't living working class lives if you look at them.

Mafia aren't smart and competent. Crime doesn't pay; criminals are in the business because they can't hack it at anything better (or they're an oppressed underclass.)

Odd, i wonder how effective the labor movement in the United States would be if it had never been run by criminals.

> Some mobsters are bad dudes, yeah, but some are regular Tokyo Joes thrown into a bad situation.

The article makes it clear that he was no "regular joe" and was likely responsible for several murders whether he pulled the trigger or not.

>have a romantic idea about mobsters

TV did that for you. This is another situation where you can prove anything if you ignore enough facts so they just gloss over or ignore all the things that don't fit the story they want to tell.

This is also a classic example of how the "entertainment" industry has been used as a vehicle to shape public perception over the last few decades.

When I was a kid the police shows were Dragnet, Adam-12 etc. The good guys won by following established rules - witnesses report, cops arrest, courts handle trials and convictions, prisons handle rehabilitation/punishment.

Today we see cop shows (firefighter, etc) where the same people who should be making the arrests instead take on the role of executioner. It's been portrayed as okay for a LEO (star of the series) to bend rules and ethical mores, to look the other way when they see one of their own fabricating evidence against someone that is already familiar to them in order to take them off the street, and they routinely ignore constitutional protections when it serves them. The whole idea that cops and courts have these options is one fabricated on your TV screen to help build the narrative that things are bad out there and you need to use all the tools, even the unconstitutional ones, to catch the bad guys because - believe them when they say - there's one around every corner and they're after you.

SV assists all this shit by building tools that they know enable invasion of privacy and near real-time surveillance of everyone who buys a gadget or an app.

In the end, your value to society is measured by what you have contributed in the process of making it better for all of us. For many of you on this site out there you have dug yourselves a deep hole and should begin working on a way to fill it in while there is still time for all of us.

I have noticed that too! When I grew up, a show would end with the bad guy being arrested and handed over to the cops. Now the hero kills the bad guy with pleasure. I think this is more and more creeping into society. Following the rules is for suckers, you have to hustle, cheating is almost mandatory (just don't get caught), discussions need to be "won", loyalty can be exploited and faking honesty and values is a recipe for success.

Also: In a lot of older sci-fi movies the aliens had motivations and could be interacted with. In most newer sci-fi movies they are just an evil faceless force that needs to be destroyed. No need for understanding.

I hope you have an opportunity to watch Magnum, P.I. S3E1 “Did You See the Sunrise?” if you haven’t already for a fantastic dramatic representation of the phenomenon you’re talking about. This antihero trope may have gathered significant momentum during this one episode.

It looks a lot like normalization of deviance accomplished over a couple of generations.

Political candidates use similar tactics in their campaigns nowadays where they make unsupportable accusations against opponents knowing that many people will remember the accusation but will not take the time to determine whether it is true. Sling enough mud and some of it will stick. Lying is normalized and rewarded. Unethical behavior gets you farther than being a person who has principles and adheres to those principles while holding those around them to the same high standards.

Society suffers and becomes more polarized when we don't call this out.

I agree about the alien thing too.

I hear you but X-Files is mad entertaining.

Every time Mulder enters a building without getting a warrant I just have to chuckle in admiration. I like how they self-decribed it, "you're like producers with guns!"

I lived in Italy for a while, and the mafia are really piece of shit garbage people. Nothing romantic about it.

Here's a guy who held a child captive for several years, strangled him, then dissolved his body in acid.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/16/italys-wan...

And that's to say nothing of how economically backwards that area is because people who start to be successful get all kinds of bad attention.

I’m working on a book of fiction that involves some of the figures mentioned tangentially in this article. Rosemont, run by the Stephenson family, a mob connected bunch, figures prominently. Interestingly, a gambling firm called Emerald with suspicious ties to Rosemont’s garbage collection was in line to open a casino in Rosemont, for which the Stephensons simply started building infrastructure before the license was granted, but an alleged meeting between Donald Stephenson and “No Nose” Lombardo put an end to those efforts. Rivers casino had to open over the border in Des Plaines so that Rosemont would not directly benefit from the tax revenue. Rosemont is a town of roughly 3000 people, and the citizens are actually paid some amount from the city’s funds for living there rather than contributing taxes, whereas Des Plaines is a town of 60000.

I would love a contemporary account of the Chicago underworld, have the Italian families long since been replaced by the cartels?

Kind of morbid to learn the meaning of English idiom "to ride shotgun" reading this story.

how did he possibly survive 3 shots to his skull like that without even any penetration of bone. is is unusual skull thickness or something? that is incredible

Wikipedia says the assassins packed the bullets themselves to make it harder to trace (the bullets?) back to them. It is assumed that they did it poorly and the bullets didn't have enough force to penetrate the skull.

Remember boys and girls - crime should not pay.

This guy lived a life outside the law and due to a twist of fate was able to live in publicly-funded obscurity until he died.

I enjoyed reading this story. It was told in a way that manages to maintain one's attention. I liked the way the author wove facts from each individual's life in to color the story.

I remember when all this came to light and arrests of mobsters became a regular news event. Problems highlighted in the story still exist - police corruption, organized crime control of drugs, prostitution, gambling, sports, etc. The difference today is really just a power dynamic shift. When you remove the influence of a group like the Mob, someone else inevitably steps in to fill the void because obviously there are opportunities in that space to profit and survival depends mainly on staying under the radar long enough to introduce yourself to customers, consolidate power and forge the local connections needed to persevere.

Just like any business.

One thing that strikes me about this story is how it tells the common story of someone in a weak position who desires to be stronger (they just want to be left alone, maybe to go fishing) and discovers a path to a form of strength (do this for us and we will protect you) that they may not have taken initially but which they can be induced to take (a promise of increased responsibility as long as they continue to follow instructions without raising any red flags) just to relieve their lack of power.

Eto was like a lot of people who find themselves powerless against some force they can't control (abusive father, bullying, racist peers) and so they exchange one peer group for another that offers some protections and a form of respect that they had not previously enjoyed. Gangs are composed of a critical mass of ruthless, power-hungry individuals who control a group of weak individuals. They demand the respect of and keep the weak ones in line by providing protection from accountability in exchange for execution of illegal or unsavory tasks that, were the weak individuals to avoid the gang, they would have never had the inclination to consider because they fear the consequences (different, more ethical peer group controlled their actions).

Cartels gained their power here in the states as these mob groups power was fading and so most of the distribution of illegal drugs is now handled by cartels. They have used the same tactics pioneered by mobsters - find people in positions of power and offer incentives to help build a base that allows one to be insulated from investigation and prosecution, send products to major population areas and make them as widely available as possible, maintain multiple entry paths for your products so that supply remains steady in spite of interdiction efforts, eliminate competition in markets you control.

I think the part of this story that disturbs me most is the untold story about the disposition of all the cases where Eto was suspected of having personally killed someone during his years spent with the Mob. I guess that once he became a prosecutorial asset all of his transgressions were forgiven in exchange for him helping dismantle the mob. I'm not sure that is a fair trade for the families of those who died. At the very least he should have been compelled to tell those stories once he was given immunity. Maybe he was and that is not part of this tale.

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