I was Punched for doing the Right Thing
[Adventures in Faith: Japan; 1991] We went to a place where thousands of men hoped to get hired as Day Laborers. A man from the crowd punched me and knocked me out. Then the man was abducted.
We had been told that the population of Kamagasaki was about 40,000, and that almost all of them were men.
Most of them were Day Laborers. A few were homeless.
Most were close to homelessness. If they had some money, they’d stay for the night in a tiny room in a hotel.
The dream of most of the men was to get a job. A one-day job.
In Kamagasaki, there weren’t many jobs. About the only chance they had was to get a one-day job.
Most one-day jobs were as an unskilled laborer with a construction company.
In English, they were called Day Laborers.
But they couldn’t get a job on their own. They needed an intermediary, a go-between.
They needed the right people to recommend them to the construction company.
Everywhere we looked in Japan, people always needed a go-between.
We were told that for the Day Laborers in Kamagasaki, the go-between was the Mafia.
We were told the men gathered not too far from Shin Imamiya station, at around 5 AM. There, the Japanese Mafia would arrange one-day jobs for them.
If I recall correctly, the specific building was the Labor and Welfare Center.
So one morning we showed up.
The crowd was huge. From the edge of the crowd, we couldn’t even see what was going on.
We could only hear somebody speaking through a handheld bullhorn.
I was trying to follow what the speaker was saying.
But then there was a tap on my shoulder.
I turned around and saw a man. He asked, “Do you remember me?”
I did.
Some days ago, he discovered Tom and me. He followed us everywhere we went. He kept asking us to buy him sake, which was rice wine.
We weren’t prohibitionists.
But to us it was pretty clear that he was an addict. We determined that we would not feed his addiction. So we refused.
He was insistent, pestering us for hours. And we refused, for hours.
Finally, he left us.
Now, here he was again. And he didn’t look drunk.
He looked angry.
He asked, “Do you remember me?” I replied, “Yes.”
He drew back and threw a punch. It landed on my jaw. He knocked me out and I fell to the ground.
Moments later, I came to. I was on the ground.
I looked up, and there he was, gloating over me.
This was his revenge.
Then there was a noise. The man looked up and out, toward the crowd.
His expression changed to alarm.
I looked around. I saw two men. They were quickly moving toward us. They had the characteristic look of members of the Japanese Mafia.
They ran up to my attacker. They each grabbed one of his arms.
They picked him up. They lifted him so high that his feet didn’t even touch the ground.
They were quite rough.
His face was the face of dread.
They carried him away, toward a big black luxury car nearby.
A Mafia-looking man at the car opened the big trunk lid of the car. They flung my attacker into the air. He landed in the trunk of the car.
They slammed the trunk lid down, got in the car, and sped away.
My attacker? We never saw him again.
Ever.
REFERENCES
At Wikipedia
Labor and Welfare Center. This page is written in Japanese. Your browser may be able to translate it for you.
ADVENTURES IN FAITH
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