1943
It was forgotten.
People forgot, for instance, that a foreign power had, in fact, seized American territory during the course of the twentieth century. In an entire century, it happened only once. In the North Pacific, Japanese forces occupied two of the Aleutian Islands. The first was Attu, at the westernmost tip of the archipelago; the second was Kiska, farther to the east. The Japanese army raised the Rising Sun over the islands in June 1942 and gave each a new Japanese name. Henceforth Attu would be called Atsuta; Kiska would be known as Narukami.
The occupation of the two islands was part of a broader strategy to divert American attention from the Japanese offensive on Midway Atoll, in the Central Pacific. On June 4, air attacks were launched against Dutch Harbor on Unalaska Island, in the heart of the Aleutians; the Battle of Midway began the next day. Japanese forces conducted surprise landings on Attu and Kiska from the night of June 7 to the morning of June 8.
The islands fell easily. America lost land to the enemy.
The Japanese had no intention of holding the islands indefinitely, however. The Aleutian campaign had originally been devised as a diversion, and it was far from clear that the islands offered any strategic value. The military planned to hold them for the short term, until winter, then consider how to proceed. This plan was revised when surveys conducted in the wake of the occupation revealed that the islands would remain habitable through the winter; toward the end of June, it was decided to hold them for the long term.
Habitable the islands were, but the climate was extraordinarily harsh. The Aleutian chain as a whole was often said to have the worst weather in the world. The frigid waters of the Bering Sea ran up against the warmer waters of the Pacific along the archipelago’s length, leaving its islands shrouded in fog that never lifted. Only rarely did the sun peek out. Ferocious winds whipped the rocks; torrential rains battered the earth. And then, of course, there was the snow.
Soon the bitter winter set in.
Things were bad on the islands in 1942, but true disaster had yet to strike. The Japanese lost air superiority, enabling the Americans to pound the islands from the skies, and there were delays in establishing ground defenses. And the worst was still to come. The full-blown tragedy would not occur until the following year.
May 1943. The garrison on Atsuta/Attu was wiped out.
As eleven thousand American soldiers rushed ashore under cover of naval bombardment, the twenty-five hundred Japanese troops stationed on the island charged into a hopeless battle, ready to meet their deaths. It was a so-called banzai attack. Not a single soldier was taken. Every last man among their number died for the Emperor.
Kiska Island.
Or now that it was Japanese territory, Narukami.
Kiska/Narukami was occupied by a force twice as large as the force on Attu/Atsuta. Some way had to be found to avoid a second tragedy. And so, though the Japanese had effectively already lost naval superiority, it was suggested that the entire force be evacuated in a plan called the “Ke-gō Operation.” The first stage, involving the evacuation by submarine of sick and injured soldiers and civilian contractors, concluded in June. The second stage, in which a naval fleet was dispatched to collect the remaining units, was carried out in July, on “Zero day.” Z-Day had first been set for July 11 but had to be postponed repeatedly owing to inclement weather. Then at last, on July 29, a rescue fleet consisting of two light cruisers and nine destroyers sailed into Kiska/Narukami Harbor and safely evacuated the island’s entire fifty-two-hundred-man garrison.
The Ke-gō Operation was a success. A heavy fog kept the Americans from noticing what they were doing.
Everyone on the island escaped. Or rather: every human.
The Japanese army abandoned the rest.
They left the military dogs. Four dogs in all. Each came from a different line. One was a Hokkaido dog—or an Ainu dog, as they were once called—a breed known for its musculature and its ability to withstand the cold. His name was Kita, and he belonged to the navy. His job was to show which of the wild plants on the island were edible: he was a taster. The second and third dogs, both German shepherds, belonged to the army. One was named Masao, the other Katsu. The fourth, also a German shepherd, was neither a navy nor an army dog; she was a bitch and had been taken from an American prisoner. Her name was Explosion.
Prior to the invasion the previous year, ten men had been operating a wireless telegraph and aerological station on the island under the aegis of the US Navy. When the Japanese military landed, eight of these soldiers escaped; the other two were taken prisoner. Explosion had been captured along with them.
The United States was deploying vast numbers of highly trained military dogs all around the world in those days, dispatching them to the front lines. It had established its first training center in 1935 at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the Marine Corps main base, and the next decade saw the creation of an additional five centers. By the end of World War II, some forty thousand dogs had been raised in these facilities. Explosion was one of these. After June 1942, however, she was no longer an American. Now she belonged to the Japanese.
Japan, as it happened, had a three-decade lead on America in military dog combat. The first time Japanese dogs ever took to the field of battle was in 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War. Japanese breeds were used, but they were trained in Germany. Eventually the military began importing German shepherds, and a research institute at an infantry school in Chiba launched Japan’s first serious effort to breed military dogs. Following the Manchurian Incident in 1931, the army ministry helped oversee the creation of a civilian-run Imperial Military Dog Society, and the Independent Garrison Unit’s War Dog Platoon began conducting experimental canine maneuvers in Manchukuo.
Not surprisingly, Germany had led the way in world military dog history. Systematic efforts to train German shepherds commenced in 1899 with the establishment of the German Shepherd Society. As early as the Great War (otherwise known as World War I), Germany was already deploying large numbers of modern military dogs. Indeed, the figure had climbed as high as twenty thousand by the time hostilities ended. And the dogs had performed incredibly well.
Germany’s success was a revelation to other nations. We can let dogs fight our wars!
Two catastrophic wars were fought during the twentieth century. The twentieth century was, it is often said, a century of war. It was also the century of military dogs.
Hundreds of thousands of dogs were sent into battle.
In July 1943, four such dogs were abandoned on an island. A certain island.
The island no longer had a name. The Japanese forces had retreated, taking the Rising Sun flags and the rest of their paraphernalia with them. The island wasn’t called Narukami anymore. As far as the Americans knew, though, it was still occupied by Japan, and until it was reclaimed it would remain an illegitimate Japanese territory. So the island was no longer Narukami, but neither had it gone back to being the American territory known as Kiska Island.
It was a nameless place, owned by four abandoned dogs.
The island was about half the size of Tokyo. A dense fog hung over it and the surrounding waters, never clearing, isolating it from the mainland and its tundra. It was an island of white. But not the white of snow, which lingered only on the peaks. Clear springs burbled through the valleys. Grasses covered the land, their blades glistened with dew that never dried. EVERYONE’S GONE, the dogs thought. THERE’S NO ONE LEFT. They knew the Japanese had gone, that they had been forsaken. Kita, Masao, Katsu, Explosion. Yes. They understood.
It was all over.
Each dealt differently with this new reality.
The nameless island had been set adrift in zero time. It was like the end of the world, or the cradle of the world’s imminent creation. Ferocious downpours daily spattered the earth. The howling wind never let up, and yet the fog never dispersed. Yellow flowers blooming among the grasses were the only flecks of brightness. The Japanese had left enough food for the dogs to last a few weeks. During squalls, the dogs hid in the trenches. On the white island.
On the foggy island.
Reddish-purple thistles bloomed.
Bouts of heavy shelling seemed to proclaim that the world had ended. Day in and day out the Americans persevered in their pointless raids, unaware that the Japanese were already gone. The flying corps showered the island with leaflets urging surrender. In all, one hundred thousand of these scraps of paper were dropped. The dogs raised their heads to watch as they rained from the sky.
Rain, leaflets, bombs. Slicing through fog.
Bombs dropped, blasted the earth.
And in the midst of it all, the world was beginning. A new world hatching from the egg of zero time. This world. Some of the dogs sensed its coming. They had no human keepers now—they had their liberty. Four muscular dogs with exceptionally keen senses, trained to withstand the cold, living on a nameless island. Free.
Explosion was a bitch. Kita, Masao, and Katsu were male. Explosion and Masao mated. Ordinarily military dogs’ reproductive activities were rigorously controlled, but here they were unsupervised. Explosion acquiesced to Masao’s advances, let him straddle her. They were both purebred German shepherds—perhaps that sparked their romance. Kita, the Hokkaido, often romped with Explosion and Masao, but he never approached Explosion.
The other German shepherd, Katsu, kept to himself. He didn’t relish his freedom. He realized that he had been abandoned on the island, that his masters would never return, but still he stayed close to the antiaircraft guns his army unit had operated, making the area his home and spending the better part of every day there.
He knew it was all over, but he refused to accept it.
Explosion, Masao, and Kita ran wild through the fields.
Frolicking, barking.
Finally the Americans decided to stage a large-scale offensive. They stopped this zero time. The island was to be given its old name back: Kiska. Their forces landed on August 15, 1943. Some fifty-three hundred Canadian troops joined the operation, forming a combined force of thirty-five thousand men. Soldiers entered the Japanese camp. There was no one there. From August 18 to 22, as many as thirty-five thousand troops combed the island in search of the enemy.
They captured three dogs.
Explosion understood. For the first time in more than a year, the soldiers she saw walking toward her were her old masters—Americans! “C’mon, boy!” someone yelled, and she dashed off ecstatically in his direction. Masao and Kita followed. They replied to the American soldiers’ calls with wagging tails. True, these were the very men they had been warned to be cautious of, trained to attack. Battle targets. But they had been released from these notions. What did they care? The men were beckoning to them, why not go? The dogs knew their days on the nameless island were over. This was Kiska again. And apparently they were going to be taken in.
They had been abandoned, freed from time. Now they were being welcomed back.
Three dogs, together, whimpered at the troops. FINALLY, they said. YOU’VE RETURNED.
The fourth dog, too, was ecstatic in his own way. Katsu lay in wait for the landing forces in his den. His masters might not have returned, but the enemy had come. He was overjoyed. He waited for the Americans by the antiaircraft guns, where he belonged, and counterattacked. NO REASON TO LOSE HOPE! I STILL HAVE WORK TO DO! When one of the Americans wandered obliviously into range, Katsu sank his teeth into his leg, then ran into a clearing that had been sewn with land mines. A few soldiers gave chase, determined to “grab that Japanese dog,” and triggered the mines. Katsu, too, had carried out a banzai attack. Katsu, like the Japanese soldiers who were his masters, sacrificed his life for the cause.
Explosion, Masao, and Kita, however, didn’t die.
They were fed, cared for. All three were American dogs now. They belonged to the American military. And their numbers increased. After nine weeks’ gestation, Explosion gave birth. It was October on Kiska Island. As a rule dogs give birth easily, but the harshness of the environment made this birth unexpectedly difficult. The soldiers called in a military surgeon to operate, and the mother and several of her pups were saved. Of nine puppies, five lived.
There were eight dogs in 1943, including Explosion’s puppies.
Eight dogs, still on Kiska Island.