Judy, Prisoner of War

by Laurie Calkhoven

  On Singkep we were given food, water, a tongkang, and instructions. “Make your way to Sumatra,” the Dutch official told us, “and then find a seaworthy ship that’s big enough to get you to India or Australia. Whatever you do, stay out of Japanese hands.”

  We followed his advice and hoped we were headed for safety.

  Sumatra, the sixth-largest island in the world, sits on the equator. It’s a land of wild jungles, raging rivers, and steep mountains. From the island’s east coast, we had to travel across the entire island—about three hundred miles—to the west coast and a ship to freedom. For now, the Dutch still held the island, but it was only a matter of time before it fell to the Japanese.

  One of my favorite humans, George White, didn’t sail with us. He and two other men decided to take their chances on whatever small boat they could find and sail the 2,680 miles to India across the open sea. My job, as always, was to stay with my ship’s crew and keep them safe. I gave George’s hand a final goodbye lick and climbed the tongkang’s gangway.

  When I got on board, I curled up next to Les Searle and hoped for the best.

  We reached the coast of Sumatra and the mouth of the powerful Indragiri River two days later. The tongkang pushed as far inland as it could before sailing became impossible. Huge animals I had never seen before roamed the thick jungle on either side of us and lounged on the riverbanks—Sumatran tigers, crocodiles, elephants, leopards, rhinos, apes, and more. The snakes—vipers, cobras, and kraits—were familiar from my time on the desert island. The mosquitoes, fire ants, leeches, scorpions, and other crawling things were ones we already knew too well.

  We had to trek through the dense rain forest and the mountains by foot to a railroad. From there, we would catch a train to the port city of Padang.

  I took the lead on our trek, looking for solid ground and alerting my humans to any threats that stood in our way. One of those threats included a crocodile that didn’t slip back into the river when we neared. I growled at it, warning it to get away, but I accidentally got a little too close.

  Ouch!

  I danced back just in time to escape its giant jaws, but it managed to slash my shoulder with its claws before it escaped into the river. From then on, I was careful to keep my distance while I barked warnings at the beasts, but there was no way I was going to let a crocodile ambush my humans. Once I even had to scare away a hungry tiger!

  For most of our trek, we had to walk single file under relentless rain, carrying the wounded on stretchers made of tree branches. We ate what we could find, and I supplied what I could catch. Mostly snakes and flying foxes.

  It took three weeks, but we finally made our way to Sawah Luento and its train station on March 15. Rumor had it that the Japanese army was rapidly advancing, so we lost no time hopping a train for the final fifty miles to Padang and freedom.

  There were cries of “There’s the sea!” as the train reached the top of a hill over Padang on the morning of March 16. But an old man met us at the station with terrible news. “The last ship left—you just missed it.”

  A minute before, I could smell hope, and now I smelled only despair. I padded from human to human, trying to raise their spirits, but it was nearly impossible.

  The Dutch still controlled the city, but just barely. Surrender to the Japanese had already been arranged. We spent the night on the docks, hoping that the Dutch were wrong and another boat would come to our rescue. None did. The next day, the men were ordered to give up any weapons they had and take shelter in a school to wait for the Japanese.

  I heard them and smelled them before the others. Motorcycles and trucks outside, and then boots pounding through the school. Searle made a leash from the cloth of his torn pants and slipped it around my collar.

  Japanese soldiers marched in, shouting words no one understood with swords jangling at their sides. One of them pointed at me, yelled something, and swept out of the room. The others followed him.

  A low growl rose in my throat—kickers—but Searle shushed me.

  Are they going to kill us all? I wondered.

  But they had other plans for us.

  On March 17, 1942, the Japanese made us prisoners of war. We wouldn’t be executed—for now.

  The next day, the Japanese separated the men and me from the women and children, and sent them to a different camp. Then the men were marched to the Dutch army barracks. I joined the British, Australian, and Dutch sailors, soldiers, and airmen as we trudged across town. Japanese guards rushed us along, prodding the men with their rifles. My men were exhausted, dirty, hungry, embarrassed, and defeated.

  I raised my head and wagged my tail, marching alongside them. Let’s show them we’re not broken, I wanted to say. Slowly the men around me understood. Heads rose, spines straightened, and steps quickened. Even the wounded showed their pride.

  We would need that strength and pride to survive. It was a struggle just to stay alive on the food rations provided by the Japanese. Searle had done his best to show the enemy that I was a full member of the Royal Navy, but there were no rations for me. I was hungry all the time. It was the same desperate hunger I had felt in my early days alone in Shanghai. Searle and his buddies gave me what they could spare, but even they sometimes scrounged through our guards’ trash, searching for something to eat.

  So I learned to hunt for my own food. Lizards, snakes, rats, and whatever rice the men could spare made up my diet. I shared what I caught with my men. Still, we never had enough.

  The days were filled with boredom and hunger. Hunger and boredom. Weeks went by and word came that we were being moved to Belawan, a port city in Sumatra. A long caravan of trucks arrived. I wasn’t welcome by the Japanese, so Searle and his buddies had to sneak me on board and hide me under some rice sacks for the hot, five-day journey across the island.

  When we reached Belawan, I smelled fear. No one had told the men what would happen next. Would we sail for Japan?

  I had worries of my own. Will Searle be able to sneak me on board a ship? Or will I be left behind to fend for myself ?

  Shortly after we arrived in Belawan, our Japanese colonel stood on a box and spoke to the men for the first time.

  “I am your father and you are my children,” Colonel Banno said. “You must obey me or I will cut off your heads.”

  He waited a moment to let that sink in.

  “I hope you will be happy in my camp. My fondest hope is that you will all go home after Japan has won the war.”

  He didn’t tell the men where that camp was or what would happen to them when they got there.

  I hid out as best I could around the docks while the men waited in dark, one-room huts to discover their fate. It didn’t take long. Instead of boarding a ship, they were forced into railcars with no windows, light, or air. Once again I slipped in unnoticed with Searle and his buddies.

  Luckily, the trip was short. On June 27, 1942, we entered a camp in Gloegoer, a suburb of the Sumatran city of Medan. We found ourselves crowded into what had been Dutch army barracks—even more crowded than those in Padang.

  Rations were less than they had been—a cup of watery rice in the morning and some kind of boiled flour for dinner. The men had nothing to spare for me, so once again I took up hunting.

  The guards were angry and mean. They kicked and threw stones when they saw me. I hated them, and they knew it. But I was still faster than their boots.

  After many days locked up in the barracks, the men were finally allowed outside and put to work. Some worked on building an airfield so Japanese planes could land. Others cleared the jungle to build a Japanese temple. Work was often accompanied by brutal beatings if the men didn’t move fast enough.

  I made new friends while I was slinking around camp and traveling to the work sites to protect my men from snakes. One of my new friends, “Cobbler” Cousens, was a man who made and repaired boots for the Japanese soldiers. He used to slip me small pieces of leather. They were hard to chew and even harder to digest, but at lea
st it was something.

  Months passed, and with each one it seemed our food rations got smaller and smaller. The men were desperate, and sometimes that meant they did foolish things.

  One day Cousens talked Searle into helping him steal a sack of rice that was unguarded. They hid it under a blanket in the back of the barracks.

  The next day, two guards marched into the barracks, shouting and demanding to inspect everything. The men got more and more desperate as the guards moved through the barracks. My friends Cousens and Searle were especially scared. If the Japanese discovered that rice, they would be beaten to death.

  I have to do something!

  We had all noticed that the Japanese were terrified of death—human skeletons and graves especially made them jumpy. I dashed to a graveyard where the local Sumatrans buried their dead and looked for an old grave. I silently apologized to the skeleton I uncovered, and then I raced back to the barracks.

  You should have seen the kickers’ faces when I ran in with a human skull between my teeth!

  They screamed and yelled while I made three loops around the room. Then, just as they were about to raise their rifles, I dropped the skull and dashed out of the room. The guards scurried out behind me, too afraid to finish their inspection.

  Ha!

  Not only did I scare the guards, my men got to keep their rice and their lives.

  Sadly, the extra rice didn’t come in time to help my cobbler friend Cousens. Soon after that, he got sick and was carried to the hospital hut. I knew that men who went in there hardly ever came out alive. I waited and waited, but my friend was gone. Searle did his best to cheer me up, but I was very sad.

  I miss my friend.

  I didn’t know it then, but I was about to make a new friend—one who would turn out to be my best friend for the rest of my life.

  After my friend Cousens died, I spent more and more time nosing around the camp for food. The men were starving and mostly couldn’t share. Then one day, in August 1942, I passed a man in the eating area. I had seen him around, but we hadn’t really met yet. Frank Williams had the same tiny bit of rice that the rest of the men had, but he could see I was hungry.

  He poured some of the watery rice into his palm.

  “Come on, Judy,” he said. “This is yours.”

  I whined. I knew Frank was starving. I gave him a chance to change his mind.

  He didn’t. Instead, he set his whole plate on the ground and petted me while I slurped it up.

  I settled in next to him. Underneath Frank’s dirt and sweat I could smell kindness, and something else—a sense of adventure. I learned later that before he joined the RAF (Royal Air Force), Frank had been a merchant marine, sailing on ships that carried goods to ports around the world. Frank and I had both gone to sea in search of friendship and adventure. Maybe that’s why we became such good friends.

  It wasn’t long before I knew I was meant to be Frank’s dog, and he was meant to be my human. He knew it, too. From then on we were inseparable. And we kept each other alive.

  One of our first adventures together involved coming up with a great plan for stealing food from the temple grounds, where the Japanese guards left fruit at the shrine. While Frank worked, I hid in a bush and listened for his whistle. When the coast was clear, I dashed to the shrine, grabbed the fruit, and ran back into the bush. At the end of Frank’s workday, we shared our feast hidden in the jungle.

  Frank taught me lots of things. I knew that when he snapped his fingers a certain way, I had to hide from the guards and not come back until he snapped again. We also did tricks for the other POWs to keep their spirits up. I could do all the usual things like sit and roll over, but Frank also taught me how to hide on command. I’d slip under his bunk and then reappear at the other end of the barracks before anyone even knew I was gone. The men loved it.

  I continued to hunt at night, and I brought Frank everything I caught and killed so we could share. On one of my nighttime treks into the jungle, I met a nice dog and we spent some time together. And boy was Frank surprised when he discovered I was going to have more puppies! On November 18, 1942, they were born—five of them. I didn’t know it then, but Frank and one of my puppies would save my life and help me make military history.

  Colonel Banno, like the other Japanese soldiers in camp, didn’t like dogs. As rations got smaller and smaller—even for them—I began to think they were looking at me like I was their next dinner. But he had a local lady friend who loved me. Whenever she came to camp, she called me to her. As long as Banno wasn’t standing right next to her, I was happy to visit because she always slipped me a treat.

  One day Frank figured out that Banno would be leaving camp to visit his girlfriend, and that’s when he came up with his plan. He hid in the bushes with one of my pups—Kish, the cutest one—and carried him into Banno’s quarters. That alone was enough to get Frank shot, but when Kish waddled across the colonel’s desk, Banno burst out laughing. Frank used sign language to suggest that Banno give Kish to his girlfriend as a present, and Banno loved the idea.

  Then Frank got to his real request. He told the colonel how important I was to morale, how much harder the men worked when I was around, and how the guards threatened to shoot me on a regular basis.

  “If you make Judy a prisoner of war, she’ll be protected,” Frank said.

  Banno said he couldn’t. Japanese records were very precise. How would he explain an extra prisoner in camp?

  “Add the letter ‘A’ to my number,” Frank suggested. “Judy can be prisoner 81-A. No need for records.”

  Kish was not only cute, he was smart, too. At that moment he did a somersault on the colonel’s desk.

  Smiling, the colonel agreed. He wrote out an official order for Frank to keep in his pocket—one that named me a prisoner of war. The men in the barracks made a tag for my collar out of a piece of old tin: 81-A Gloegoer Medan.

  I was official! The guards couldn’t threaten to shoot me anymore, and I’d get to stay with Frank.

  I hated saying goodbye to Kish, but he was going to a good person who loved dogs. My other pups found new homes, too. A secret request for a puppy came from the women’s POW camp, and a local fruit seller smuggled Sheikje to them in her basket. Rokok snuck through a drainage pipe so he could go to the Swiss consulate in Medan. Punch and Jackie stayed in camp for as long as they could, but one day they escaped into the jungle. They had inherited my love of adventure. I hoped they’d inherited my survival skills, too.

  Things went okay after that. We were starving, but we survived. Then in April 1943, Banno left and a new officer took over—Captain Nishi. He was the meanest one yet.

  On his first day, Nishi had the men assemble in the yard and stand at attention—even the men who were sick. I followed orders and stood at Frank’s side.

  Nishi took one look at me and stormed over, slapping his cane against his boot. I was scared, but I was mad, too, and I started to growl.

  Frank pulled out the paper that made me an official POW.

  That made Nishi even angrier, but Banno was a colonel and he was just a captain, so he couldn’t give the order to kill me—at least not yet.

  He forced the men to work—taking apart an old factory—until they could hardly stand, and then prodded them to work some more. Those who couldn’t were badly beaten.

  Then Nishi made an announcement: “According to the Imperial High Command, all prisoners are ordered to Singapore.”

  There was relief and even a little hope in the air. Singapore meant civilization and maybe news about how the war was really going. It might mean letters from home, or even Red Cross packages. Best of all, it meant no more jungle.

  Frank was packing his few belongings back in the barracks when Nishi stormed in. Frank snapped his fingers and I slipped under the bunk out of sight.

  “Dog not go,” Nishi shouted. “Dog stay.” As he strode out, the men saw a smile flit across his face.

  My friend slumped on his bunk, devastat
ed. I crept out and licked his hand.

  “I won’t leave you behind, girl,” he said, ruffling my ears.

  For the next few hours, we practiced a new trick. Frank would snap his fingers, and I’d run into the rice sack at his feet. The next time he snapped, I’d run out again and dash for cover. We did that over and over and over again.

  After I had that trick down, Frank practiced standing with me in the sack while it hung over his shoulder. I had to stay very still and not give myself away. It was hot and dark and uncomfortable, but if that’s what it took for Frank and me to stay together, that’s what I’d do.

  At dawn the next day, we were called to the yard. The line of sick and wounded was as long as the men who were considered healthy—if starving could still be “healthy.” Under Nishi’s mean eyes, Frank tied me to a pole with a long rope.

  “Now you stay right here, girl,” he said.

  I licked his hand. I knew what those words really meant: Join me as soon as the coast is clear.

  Frank stood with the others, a rice sack holding a blanket at his feet. Nishi checked his bag personally, and then looked over Frank’s shoulder and gave me a cruel smile.

  “Move!” he shouted to the men. “March!”

  The POWs hobbled toward the gates.

  Frank was near the end of the line. I watched him carefully, waiting for the signal. He had just cleared the gates when he whistled. I slipped from my knot and dashed into the jungle lining the road. I stayed out of sight until Frank was at the train station, ready to board.

  Frank knelt down to tie his shoe and handed the blanket in his rice sack to another man. The prisoners formed a circle around him and then Frank snapped his fingers. I was in that sack in seconds, and we stepped onto the train.

  When we reached the port city, Frank gave me the signal to hide. I hid in the only place I could think of—under the train. Then, as the prisoners were lined up and marched toward the port, I followed from whatever cover I could find. When Frank’s rice sack was checked, the guards found it filled with a blanket, just like in camp.