COMING SOON
Tab Alexander, aka Masuki Kaneshiro, is the only African American documented in the annals of organized crime to be a made member of the Japanese mafia, known as the Yakuza. His story, while uniquely American, is also one of criminal enterprise on an International scope.
The Yakuza of Japan. An ancient institution shrouded in mystery and grounded in ceremony.
The Vice Lords of Chicago. A group with deep roots in the prisons of America, devoted to principle and also grounded in ceremony.
Both groups are overwhelmingly dedicated to earning profits through any and all means, particularly those of the illicit variety. These two groups once intersected in the fertile soil of Hawaii, in the person of Tab Alexander, aka Masuki Kaneshiro, and Gangsta Samurai is that story.
As the criminally provincial era of the 70s rolls into the diversified and international 80s, the tender paradise of the islands of Hawaii was prime for a criminal organization looking to exploit every possible vice man could conceive. The core of this group were the Yakuza, the Islands’ Pacific Neighbors to the West, and their main representative on the Islands, Kenny Kinichi “Dad” Kaneshiro.
When the ultra-connected Kenny Kaneshiro meets the ultra-ambitious young Chicago Vice Lord Tab Alexander, opportunity meets opportunity. It is no less than serendipitous alchemy. Kenny adopts his new “son” into the Yakuza with full ceremony, and Tab becomes Masuki Kaneshiro. He also becomes part of a criminal enterprise sprawling from Hawaii to Las Vegas to Chicago, engaging with “Dad” in every type of imaginable crime: large-scale heroin trafficking, gun running, prostitution, pornography, gambling, and ultimately, murder.
Father and son play out a wildly ambitious scheme of crime on the streets of Chicago and the beaches of Hawaii. Rackets expand, money flows, but with great ambition comes great problems. Unimaginable drama unfolds as bodies pile up on and off the continent as this new family grapples with enemies inside and out. The law and the lawless try to topple them from their throne.
Gangsta Samurai escorts readers along the soft underbelly of organized crime from Japan’s notorious Yamaguchi Gumi Yakuza clan to Hawaii’s criminal element called “The Company.” Both enterprises are associated with the deadly United States Mafia and the Outfit, but the conspiracy rises and falls on streets belonging to Chicago’s Vice Lords.
While there are plenty of true-crime books on the American Mafia, there are far fewer on the Japanese Yakuza, especially in the United States. Crime in Hawaii and Chicago has been documented in several fashions over the years; however, there is no story connecting all of it together. The legend of the gang member turned Yakuza has been whispered on the tough streets of Chicago’s worst neighborhoods for years, but it was largely regarded as just that, a legend, until now.
This is one of the greatest feats of investigative scholarship to mine a unified narrative through seemingly unrelated secret organizations, weaving a web of crime thousands of miles apart.
Coming Soon!
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Coming Soon! 〰️
Auto racing is not normally associated with the powerful Chicago Outfit. However, in the late 1970’s and early 80’s, their worlds collided with extreme violence when mafia wheelmen collided with professional motorsportsmen.
The chop shop war was a fabled footnote to the long history of organized crime. Theories abound of mafia allegiances, root causes, and ultimately, victory. The racket revolved around stolen cars, from the pullers to the choppers to the retaggers, and finally the enforcers. The illicit proceeds were in the millions, and Chicago was the center of the hot car universe. But with big money comes big problems. Payoffs, street taxes, and law enforcement all contributed to the fog of war.
This true story has been meticulously researched by an expert in organized crime. The excitement begins at the 1952 Daytona 500 and ends with dozens of murders and a battered Chicago Outfit with a plethora of connected stories that sound stranger than fiction.
Chicago Catholic Churches: A Sketchbook
Godfathers of Chicago’s Chinatown
Even in a town notorious for gangsters like Al Capone, much of Chicago’s lawless lore has remained uncharted. Chicago’s Chinatown, in particular, was home to a vast criminal enterprise, strictly bound by old-country rituals, rules and traditions. Few know of Moy Dong Chew, aka “Opium Dong,” one of Chinatown’s original godfathers, much less Frank Moy, his fedora-wearing predecessor. While incidents like the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre dominated newspaper headlines, the Tong Wars were being waged in the shadows. Author Harrison Fillmore relates the long and sordid history of Chinatown’s underbelly from the early 1880s to the late 1980s, when a federal indictment essentially ended organized crime’s grip on its good citizens.