Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • September 22, 2010 in 2006. The island was sandy, mosquito-ridden, and accommodated a number of alligators. The Japanese-Americans were barracked at nearby Ship Island and boated to Cat Island by Coast Guardsmen. During some rocky weather, a Japanese-American who didn’t swim much fell out of one of the boats. The Coast Guardsmen found this hilarious and decided to sail away and let him drown. One of the Japanese-Americans, who was a strong swimmer, jumped in and rescued him. It was all downhill from there. The first phase of the operation, as Nosaka described it, was to make friends with the dogs so the dogs would follow them into the woods and swamps of Cat Island. The second phase was to brutalize the dogs so the animals would hate the sight or smell of the Japanese and would attack them on sight or smell. Nosaka – who, like most Japanese, was fond of dogs – hated this part of the training, but reluctantly put up with it. The dogs learned to hate the Japanese-Americans and would usually attack them on sight – and despite padded clothing and whatever training they had picked up in judo or the martial arts, the Japanese-Americans were bitten almost routinely. Sometimes, Nosaka remembered, he had to fight three dogs at one time: a boxer, a German shepherd, and another breed he didn’t recognize. He managed to stay on his feet most of the time until the white trainer told him to take a dive and let the dogs savage him through his padded clothing so they didn’t become demoralized. Sometimes, Nosaka was told to hide in a swamp, where he was more worried about the alligators than the dogs. The program started to fall apart as the American officers in charge noticed that, no matter how much the dogs were beaten, the dogs generally preferred making friends with the Japanese-Americans designated as insulated dog bait to trying to kill them. White American officers and non-coms began to fire off secret letters asking whether the mysterious Prestre knew anything about dogs. The white Americans also complained about the brutality of the program both to the Japanese-American enlisted men and to the dogs, which were family pets donated to the war effort. The final showdown came when test combat landings were a total flop. The attack dogs charged down the ramp, scampered onto the beach, and showed absolutely no inclination to attack the simulated “garrison” of JapaneseAmericans impersonating soldiers of the Emperor. The dogs were also terrified of simulated artillery fire and scampered in all directions whining at the explosions. When they were not under simulated fire, the dogs milled around the seashore looking for a ride back to the kennel. After four months of tormenting dog-bitten American citizens who happened to be Japanese and brutally abusing loyal Americans’ family pets, the program collapsed. Prestre was given the sack and left the federal payroll accusing FDR and the U.S. War Department of treason and branding himself as a world-class eccentric. The Japanese-Americans were returned to their unit, still brandishing the scars of numerous dog bites. Their unit, the 800th (Special) Infantry Battalion – One Puka Puka in Hawaiian slang – merged with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and became the most decorated unit in the history of the United States Army, with 21 Congressional Medals of Honor once corrections were made for previous racism. Audie Murphy, the most decorated U.S. soldier of World War II, mentioned them with great respect. None of the actions where the 800th or the 442nd won medals and decorations involved beating up dogs or getting mauled in padded clothing. The dogs were scattered to other programs. Some became scouts and sentries. Others performed prodigies of valor: Chips, a dog assigned to sentry duty for the Roosevelt-Churchill conference at Casablanca, later helped capture an enemy pillbox in Sicily. Dick, a German shepherd war dog in the Pacific, helped the U.S. Marines locate four Japanese sleeping in a hut. All were shot without American losses. Dogs were of great benefit as assistants on guard duty and as mascots to lonely servicemen. They didn’t do a lot of killing. The Cat Island program was, in essence, a racist farce based on ignorance. For openers, Japanese body odor is so negligible that, given a chance for the mandatory daily bath, it isn’t strong enough to attract canine attention in jungles that stink from rotten vegetation, dead animals, and soldiers whose luck ran out. More important still, the kind of knee-jerk hostility that engenders a desire to kill is possible only through racist or political propaganda. Dogs, deluded as they may be, are willing to accept their social role as second-string humans. They will instinctively attack anyone who poses a threat to the family members who play with them and feed them, but they don’t relate well to programs that encourage them to seek out enemies or victims based on skin color or eye shape. Neither are they interested in ripping out the throats of people based on politics or religious preference. Wouldn’t it be a better world if we all followed their example and responded only to direct threats and not to hate-filled rhetoric, rumors of weapons of mass destruction, or wars that benefit corporate greed or foreign governments? Carl Sagan, in his dotage, once suggested we should all be more like chimpanzees, but Jane Goodall, among others, noted that chimpanzees sometimes kill their own kind. Go with dogs. They actually want to be humans. Maybe we all should. The ramps of the U.S. landing barges dropped in the Pacific surf and the attackers swarmed up the beach. Greyhounds and Russian wolfhounds charged up the sandy slopes and ripped out the throats out of Japanese machinegunners and mortar men. The second wave – German and Belgian sheep dogs – charged ahead and massacred the Japanese foot soldiers – augmented by Irish wolfhounds in case any sumo wrestlers were among the defenders. Last but not least, bloodhounds and collies of the third wave sniffed out anyone who had climbed trees. After the patriotic American dogs had finished off the Japanese, the landing barges returned and picked the canine heroes up for a trip to the next Japanese-occupied island. Did this ever happen? No. Was it supposed to happen? You bet! We are probably still paying for the delusion through the national debt. During World War II, a patriotic Swiss-American named William A. Prestre sold the United States War Department on the idea that swarms of attack dogs, without direct human support, could wipe out Japanese resistance on Pacific islands without wasting the lives of U.S. Marines or soldiers. The program, which involved 25 leery Japanese-American soldiers, a similar number of white dog handlers, and thousands of family pets donated by Americans was carried out on Cat Island, off the coast of Mississippi. Taxpayers’ contributions can only have been in the millions. Not a single Japanese soldier was ever engorged by the dogs of Cat Island, and mercifully the Americans of Japanese ancestry also survived, by dint of a lot of a lot of sulfa and iodine. Nobody knows how many of the hapless dogs made it back home to the American families who loved them. It was a very rough war for everybody –and an abyss of hurt feelings and a waste of money seldom seen even in the annals of The Greatest Generation. Things were not going well when Prestre sold his plan to the U.S. War Department. The Japanese had done a spin on the American propagandists who tried to convince unhappy church-going draftees that it was okay to shoot people who looked rather like children because they were not really human. Let’s hear from Tokyo Rose: “Hey, Joe, what are you doing on New Guinea anyway? Wouldn’t you rather be taking your girl to the big game, or having a hamburger with your buddies? Well, Joe, take care of yourself, and remember: The jungle’s where we live; it’s where you die. Right. The only answer for that was to send in the dogs. In October 1942, after months of unpleasantness on New Guinea and Guadalcanal, 25 enlisted men of Company B, 100th Infantry Battalion Separate (a segregated unit of Japanese-American soldiers in the U.S. Army) were detailed to Cat Island on a top secret mission. The Japanese-American soldiers learned their mission was to become sparring partners for donated pet dogs whose own mission was to detect and kill Japanese soldiers. Ray Nosaka, a Japanese-Hawaiian, described the island and the training in some detail for the University of Hawaii A cautionary tale about dogs of Cat Island The 2010 Ramsey Day celebration again included the popular dog show. An obstacle course was added this year, attracting 12 dogs to the inaugural event. Pictured are Bill Patterson, recreation commission vice-chairman; Pam Re’, dog show co-chairman; John Sebastian, recreation commissioner and obstacle course designer; owner Erica Levine with Smash, the winner of the obstacle course competition; and Rachel Dey and Joseph Dey, timekeepers. At right: Best in Show honors for the 2010 Ramsey Day Dog Show went to Giada, shown with her proud owner, Teresa Mielnicki. Enjoyable event