Belka, Why Don't You Bark - By Hideo Furukawa Page 0,3

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