CHICAGO _ Dick Portillo, as fast-food connoisseurs know, is the hot dog and Italian beef king of Chicago, the man who started his business in a food trailer in 1963 and built it into an empire of 38 successful diners before selling it reportedly for nearly $1 billion two years ago.
Isoroku Yamamoto is a venerated figure in Japan and a sinister figure in U.S. history. As commander of the Japanese navy beginning in 1939, he opposed war with the U.S. but dutifully orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Sixteen months later, Yamamoto was killed when U.S. pilots shot down his plane. His death dealt a catastrophic blow to the Japanese psyche and war effort, and it was a crucial turning point in the war.
In a safe in Portillo's sleekly appointed ninth-floor office is what would be a most unlikely link between the two men: a gold tooth that may have been in Yamamoto's mouth when his plane was attacked over Papua New Guinea.
"I'll do whatever it takes to find out," Portillo said one afternoon, holding the gold tooth in his Oakbrook Terrace conference room while recounting his acquisition of the incisor.
Portillo's friends are making contacts across the Pacific to determine the tooth's origin.
"And, if I can prove that to the world, maybe there'd be a lot of people interested in that. I think there would be."
