For the people and animals around the world whose lives are disrupted by war. May you find peace.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE: ESCAPE FROM SINGAPORE
CHAPTER 1: ADVENTURE IN SHANGHAI
CHAPTER 2: DOG OVERBOARD!
CHAPTER 3: PUPPY LOVE
CHAPTER 4: THE GRASSHOPPER
CHAPTER 5: TRAPPED
CHAPTER 6: A DANGEROUS JOURNEY
CHAPTER 7: FRANK AND ME
CHAPTER 8: TORPEDOES!
CHAPTER 9: THE DEATH RAILWAY
CHAPTER 10: “SHOOT THE DOG”
EPILOGUE: AFRICA
HISTORICAL NOTE
A NOTE ON PLACE NAMES
FURTHER READING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CARD PAGE
COPYRIGHT
Singapore was under siege. As a ship’s dog on the HMS Grasshopper, an English gunboat, my job was to keep the men’s spirits up and warn them when danger was near. Today, danger was all around.
Japanese bombs had been falling since December. The first Japanese troops entered Singapore in February 1942. On the eleventh, the British got the order to evacuate. Soldiers, government workers, and British and Chinese families all crowded the pier, fighting for a place on a ship—any ship. Every vessel, from small fishing boats to private yachts and passenger steamers, no matter how old, was called into service.
Gunfire and bombs were all around us. The normal waterfront smells mingled with the unsettling scents of smoke and death. And underneath all the other smells was fear. The civilians, especially the children, were terrified, and it was my job to help them. I was afraid, too, but I never let them see it.
On February 13, the final evacuation began. Sailors desperately tried to keep order on the pier while confused and frightened mothers and children came on board the Grasshopper. My friend George White gave each person a cup of tea and a piece of chocolate, while I wagged my tail, nuzzled little fingers, and barked a hello.
Welcome to the Grasshopper, I told them. You’re safe here.
As darkness fell, we began to pull out of the crowded harbor, when suddenly we got the order to turn around. There was another group of refugees who needed to come on board. Every inch of the ship was already full, but we somehow made room for more.
We finally left the harbor after midnight. The hardest thing was hearing the shouts from the people who had been left behind. I stood on the deck and howled with them.
I’m sorry. We’re already dangerously overcrowded. There’s no more room.
As soon as we were out of earshot, I snuggled down between two of the most frightened children and tried to get some sleep. But, as always, my ears were on alert for the sound of Japanese warplanes and the bombs they carried.
With luck, we’d make it to Java in a few days, and from there, larger ships could take us to India or Australia.
Unfortunately, luck wasn’t on our side.
I’m going to tell you the story of how I became an official Japanese prisoner of war during World War II, and how I managed to keep myself and my men alive.
But before we get to all that, let’s start at the beginning—in Shanghai, China.
It all started at the Shanghai Dog Kennels in Shanghai, China, in February 1936. My mother was one of the finest English pointers in the city, and I looked just like her. My face was almost entirely brown and my body was white with lots of brown spots. I was born in the English-run dog kennels, which meant that as soon as I was big enough, one of the English families living in Shanghai would bring me home.
The English loved Chinese tea, silk, and other goods, so there were a lot of English people living in the country at that time, working for companies that shipped those goods back to Great Britain. They tried hard to make China feel like home, which included having dogs as pets. Pointers are very playful, especially with children, and we also make great gundogs.
Gundogs point to game when their humans are hunting. We’re much better at that than humans could ever be. To be perfectly honest, human noses don’t work very well. That’s why humans need dogs. My sense of smell is about a hundred thousand times more powerful than yours.
At three weeks old, I was at the kennel, waiting for my real life to begin. I was ready for adventure and tired of being kept in a cage. The excitement of Shanghai was just a few feet away—rickshaws, cars, bicycles, food carts, horseflies, shops, and people. Best of all were the smells—so many of them! And I wanted to investigate them all. So when no one else was looking, and my brothers and sisters were busy crowding around my mom, I wiggled my nose under the wire. Then I wiggled some more. And then I popped right through the wire fence and onto the street.
It was amazing! I ran from one smell to the next, checking everything out, dodging rushing feet and rolling tires. A fly landed on my nose and took off. I chased it, but it was too fast for my pudgy little legs. A few people stopped to pet me, but a food cart vendor gave me a shove when I tried to check out his wares.
That made me realize I was hungry, and it was starting to get cold, too. I was ready to go home, but I couldn’t remember where home was. I had dashed here and there, from one smell to the next, without paying any attention.
What am I going to do?
I whimpered, hoping someone would stop and help. No one did.
I lifted my nose and sniffed a big sniff, hoping to follow the scent of the kennels—the warm, delicious smell of puppies and my mother and the humans who took care of us. But there were too many other smells crowding around me.
I was lost. I was scared. I was cold. But mostly I was hungry.
I have to fill my belly, I realized. Then I can find home.
So I searched for food.
Garbage heaps turned out to be the best place to find a snack, and once in a while a nice human slipped me a handful of rice. Even so, I could never fill my belly and I never did find home. Days went by, and then a week or two. I was hungry all the time.
I wandered around the city, searching for food and a cozy place to live. Not all of the humans I ran into were nice, and I started to think I would never find a safe place. Then I found Mr. Soo standing by the back door of his shop.
“Hello there,” he said, reaching down to pet me. “You look hungry, little one.”
I trained my big brown eyes on him and wagged my tail to say, I’m hungry and I like you.
Mr. Soo went back inside, and I was afraid that he wouldn’t come out again. But he did! And he had food! He gave me a small handful of rice and fish from his lunch.
I learned that not only did Mr. Soo love dogs, but he also had a small store full of all kinds of interesting things. He sold stuff mostly to the British and American sailors that were all over Shanghai.
At that time, Shanghai was full of westerners. It’s a port city on China’s coastline that sits at the mouth of the Yangtze River—Asia’s longest river. England, America, and France all had business in the country. But because warlords and pirates sailed the Yangtze, those countries sent gunboats to patrol the waters and keep their merchant ships safe.
I stayed with Mr. Soo for a few weeks after that. He fed me scraps of his own meals every day, and he let me sleep in a box in the alley behind his shop. Sometimes he let me in the store and I helped him wait on the sailors. Mr. Soo saved my life. Shanghai was a dangerous place for a dog like me, and I was safe in his shop. I still patrolled the neighborhood looking for extra scraps, but I was grateful to have a box to sleep in and a kind human to visit every day.
I thought that might be my life from then on. But another danger made itself known—Japanese sailors.
Japan’s ships, like England’s and America’s, sailed up and
down the Yangtze River. Japanese sailors patrolled Shanghai, and often got into fights with the English and Americans. I had learned to recognize Japanese sailors pretty quickly after I escaped from the kennel—mostly because they always kicked me. And tonight there was a whole group of them yelling and throwing things around in Mr. Soo’s shop.
Mr. Soo tried to get them to stop. When he did, they started to hit him. He was already on the floor, bleeding, when I ran through the back door into the shop. The Japanese sailors knocked over shelves, breaking everything and then stomping on the pieces. I tried to run to Mr. Soo’s side, but the sailors spotted me. One gave me a kick and another threw something at my head. Then a third one grabbed me by the neck and carried me outside.
I yelped, partly because I was in pain and partly to attract attention, but no one had time to come to my rescue. That sailor kicked me across the street and into a pile of garbage. I heard them all laughing as they left the shop.
Neighbors ran to help Mr. Soo, but no one saw me or came to help. My stomach hurt and I was scared. I was afraid someone would come along and step on me. So I limped into an empty doorway and curled up.
It was dark. I shivered and cried from the cold and the fear and the pain while I watched the sky slowly change from black to purple to pale gray. I sniffed the air around me, hoping for the smell of food or Mr. Soo. But instead, there was another smell I recognized—Lee Ming!
Lee Ming’s mother worked with Miss Jones, the English lady in charge at the Shanghai Dog Kennels. The little girl used to come and visit and play with my brothers and sisters and me. I liked her.
I lifted my snout to smell her good, friendly smell, and I started to cry harder in the hope that she would hear me. The next thing I knew, she was kneeling in front of me. Even with just a human nose, she recognized me right away.
“Shudi! Oh, Shudi, where have you been?” Lee Ming asked.
I tried to thump my tail as a way to say hi and I’ve missed you and Japanese soldiers are mean, but I hurt too much.
Lee Ming picked me up gently and wrapped me in her raincoat.
I’d had no idea I was so close to the kennels and regular meals all this time, but we were home in minutes. She brought me straight to Miss Jones.
“Look who I found!” Lee Ming said.
“Goodness! Is that our missing pointer?” Miss Jones asked. Then she said wonderful, wonderful words: “I think we should give her a bath and a good dinner.”
They got no argument from me. Although I would have changed the order of things and had a good dinner first and then the bath.
Lee Ming and Miss Jones were very gentle. They cleaned me up, fed me, and made sure I wasn’t seriously hurt.
Lee Ming could tell I didn’t like all the poking and prodding. She wrapped me in a blanket and held me in her arms. I stayed awake only long enough for them to make my name official.
“You’re okay; there, there, little Shudi,” Lee Ming said.
“Why did you call her Shudi, Ming?” Miss Jones asked.
“Shudi means ‘peaceful,’” Ming told her. “Look at her. Doesn’t she look peaceful?”
“She does,” Miss Jones said. “Then that will be her name—Judy.”
So from then on, I was called Judy. And it wasn’t long before I was back to my old self—plump, shiny, and ready for fun. My mother and my siblings had all gone on to their humans’ homes, but there were other dogs for me to play with and warn about the dangers in the outside world.
Stay away from Japanese sailors, I warned them. And anyone with hungry eyes.
We all agreed that eating dogs was a horrible, no-good thing to do.
Luckily, we were all in a place with humans who loved dogs and would make sure we went to good homes. Now that I was healthy and well-fed again, I began to wonder what mine would be like.
I was almost six months old when my next adventure began, but I didn’t escape the kennels again. This time I was chosen.
Remember I said that English gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River? The Gnat was one of those ships. And it was nearly perfect. There was just one thing missing—a mascot. So while the ship was docked in Shanghai to get fixed up and collect supplies, Lieutenant Commander J. M. G. Waldegrave (the ship’s captain, called a “skipper”) and Chief Petty Officer Charles Jeffery set off for the Shanghai Dog Kennels to find one.
They had three requirements. There were only men on the ship, so they wanted a girl to balance things out. They wanted that girl to be a beauty. And they wanted a dog that was able to earn her keep.
Jeffery took one look at me and let out a slow whistle. You can’t blame him. I’m a beautiful pointer, so they thought I would make a good hunting dog. I already liked Jeffery’s smell, and when I heard him whistle, I jumped right into his arms. The next thing I knew, I was an official member of the British Royal Navy.
That very afternoon, I went to live on the HMS (short for His Majesty’s Ship) Gnat. Like other gunboats, the Gnat was small and fast and able to maneuver in the Yangtze. She had some big guns on her deck and even a couple of antiaircraft cannons.
The skipper and the chief petty officer brought me aboard and hid me in a small room with a quartermaster. Then I heard someone say, “All hands on deck in ten minutes!”
Sailors pulled on their uniforms and crowded onto the deck.
One of them, a first lieutenant, climbed onto a wooden crate and made an announcement about how shooting parties going ashore to hunt would have to come back with more than just one duckling in the future.
He turned and yelled, “Quartermaster!”
The quartermaster led me out onto the deck.
There were a few whistles and then a big cheer. I gave all the sailors my biggest smile while I wagged my tail.
“Here she is, gentlemen,” the first lieutenant said. “Meet the first lady of the gunboats—Judy RN.”
That’s short for Royal Navy. I was official!
I raised my snout and tried to look as first-lady-ish as possible, but it’s hard to look dignified when you’re as happy as I was at that moment. I had an exciting new life in front of me. One that was going to be full of adventure, nice humans, and—most important—food!
Able Seaman Jan “Tankey” Cooper was named the “Keeper of the Ship’s Dog.” Tankey was in charge of the ship’s food and freshwater tanks. He was also the ship’s butcher, which meant lots of bones for me. I loved Tankey, but really I belonged to the whole ship.
It wasn’t long before I knew every nook and cranny on the Gnat and every sailor, too. It was a good life. I had plenty of chow and lots of juicy bones. There was always someone around to play with. And if I didn’t feel like sleeping in my comfy blanket-filled box on the ship’s deck, I could always curl up with one of the sailors.
The skipper and the chief petty officer, along with Tankey, did their best to train me “for the gun.” When they took me on shore, I was supposed to go rigid and point whenever I scented a duck, quail, antelope, or gazelle in the woods around the Yangtze. Well, it turned out I wasn’t very good at that. I was only good at pointing at one thing—the ship’s galley when dinner was being cooked.
By the time the HMS Gnat left Shanghai in November 1936, everyone accepted that I was a ship’s dog and not a gundog. My training started too late for me to be able to learn that now. I’d have to prove myself useful in other ways—if my curiosity didn’t get me into trouble first.
I was used to the noise of Shanghai, but the roar of the Gnat’s engines and the rush of the water as we fought our way upstream was another thing entirely. The gray foam that followed the ship, churned up by the engines, fascinated me. So did the yellowish-brown water that stretched in front of us. It was full of new smells.
A few days after I joined the ship, I wiggled under the ship’s rail and onto the steel plates on the outer edge of the deck to get an even closer look. I had seen men out there before. They always attached themselves to the rail with a leash.
As soon as I got out ther
e, I realized why. These steel plates are wet and slippery!
I danced around, barking at the churning, frothing water below me and trying to keep my footing.
The last thing I heard as I went over the edge was “Man overboard! No! Dog! Dog overboard!”
I hit the water with a giant splash and howled. Bad-tasting water rushed into my mouth.
This is cold! And deep!
I had splashed in puddles and in baths, but I had never been in deep water before. I paddled and paddled, trying to keep my head above water.
Even worse than the deep, cold water—the Gnat was going in one direction and the rushing river was carrying me in the other! I paddled as hard as I could, but there was no way I’d be able to fight my way back to my ship. The water was too rough and too fast.
I’m in big trouble!
Suddenly, there was a buzzing sound behind me. I couldn’t see what it was over the choppy water, but it got louder and louder as I struggled to keep myself from being dragged under.
Then I saw it—a small boat with Seaman Vic Oliver at the tiller. He fought his way toward me, and then he passed right by. One of the Chinese boat boys and another seaman were with him.
I would have barked to say, Come back! but keeping my head above water took every bit of energy I had.
Then Oliver gave the boat a tight turn. The Chinese boat boy leaned over the side to grab my collar.
Rescue! I thought.
But not quite—the boy fell overboard, too, and we were both dragged under! I could feel him thrashing near me while I fought to break the surface and take a breath. The next thing I knew, two sets of hands were pulling me, and then the boy, out of the water.
I heard a cheer from the deck of the Gnat as I slumped, shivering, in the bottom of the rescue boat. When I got back on ship, I was covered in Yangtze River mud. I thought I smelled wonderful, but CPO Jeffery insisted on giving me a hot bath, which was fine since I was freezing. Then he took me back out on deck. That scared me a little—I didn’t want to fall overboard again! But he pointed to all the things I should stay away from, and that included anything too close to the edge.
Judy, Prisoner of War Page 1