Safe and sound

Luckily, the tsunami never materialized in Arakawa. At 12:08, the RDTA team recommenced its search and bumped into Morita with an army truck in tow. He had encountered the army patrol by chance and took advantage of the opportunity to help to the elderly man, who was now on the roof of his home with the riot policeman.

During his time in the army, Morita had been a ranger instructor with the 1st Airborne Brigade at Camp Narashino. He knew ropes. Using the single line he had on him, Morita lashed the old man to his back and carried him down a ladder and over to the truck, pausing only to clamber over a fallen tree.

Morita returned to his team. The dogs were covered in mud, their paws and legs were stained with blood from walking over nails and glass. Despite their obvious discomfort, the pups soldiered on.

But the dogs didn’t find anyone that day, either. The rescuers pulled out at 5:00 PM for the hour-long journey back to the police academy. Seventy-two hours had passed and the team had not found any survivors in the rubble.

It took another three days for the team to get back home. When their helicopter touched down at Atsugi on March 17, the rescuers stepped onto the tarmac to find ranks of navy personnel standing at salute. If that is where the story had ended, it would have been perfect.

Kongo and Myoken made it home safely. Kure’s commanding officer recommended both dogs for an award collar and gave the pups a kilogram of beef as a bonus. The canine pair became local celebrities. But while Myoken continued with his work in Kure, the navy pulled Kongo from training.

The diarrhea that the team had noticed in Tohoku hadn’t stopped. There were other small signs that Kongo’s health was failing. His handlers could see it, but Kongo kept his illness well-hidden. He was always eager to go out and train. Being kept from the action infuriated him. Sitting in his kennel overlooking the training ground, he barked and howled in protest.

Worried that Kongo’s agitation would make him even sicker, his handlers moved him to a more isolated location up in the hills behind the base. But the hero dog never recovered.

Kongo didn’t eat his breakfast on Aug. 9. He was limp, exhausted. Matsumoto rushed him to the hospital, where the vets kept Kongo under observation. The next morning was his last.

Kongo died from acute pneumonia at the age of four years and four months—just half the average retirement age of sentry dogs.

After his death, Kongo was enshrined at a new Shinto memorial for guard dogs at his home base in Kure. Four other dogs from the base who had died that year were also enshrined in the Dec. 8 ceremony, but only Kongo received a posthumous award collar for his death in the line of duty.

Kongo’s handler Matsumoto told the Chuugoku Shinbum that he would always remember the “eager manner in which he keep at this duties, head down.”

“There are very few dogs so suited as a rescue dog,” Matsumoto added.

Kongo shortly before his death. Ishizaki Animal Hospital photo

Unanswered questions

Kongo’s story first came to the public’s attention in the work of Misa Sakurabayashi, who has made a name for herself as a chronicler of positive stories about the SDF in various publications belonging to the nationalist Sankei group.

Working in a male-dominated field, Sakurabayashi stands out not only for being a woman, but also for writing heartfelt military human-interest stories.

They need to be told. Civil-military relations in Japan are strained. Many people consider the SDF an unconstitutional tax-thief and an unwelcome reminder of Japan’s militarist past. Many newspapers report with relish on every misdeed by SDF members.

But the earthquake put the SDF in the spotlight, this time as heroes—and it’s thanks to reporters like Sakurabayashi that the SDF is enjoying an image boost—and all the recruitment benefits that entails. But balance is important.

Sakurabayashi published Arigatou Kongoumaru in March 2012. The easy-to-read little book builds on her reports for the Evening Fuji. Like wartime Japanese dog stories, the book promotes an heroic ideal, with Kongo and Myoken as the examples.

It’s an uncritical and sometimes inaccurate dramatization. In Sakurabayashi’s account, Kongo and Myoken find the elderly couple in Watari, but we know that’s not true. The RDTA’s after-action briefings indicate that RDTA team leader Tamagawa found the couple.

In Sakurabayashi’s account, Kongo’s death is an unavoidable tragedy, but is that really the case? Why did the navy deploy a sick dog to disaster zone? Did anyone adequately monitor the pup’s health?

In hindsight, the signs that Kongo was sick while on deployment seem unambiguous. RDTA team leader Michio Yamada later wrote that when he saw Kongo aboard the helicopter at Atsugi on March 12, the dog looked “terribly thin.”

Matsumoto reportedly noticed Kongo’s condition the next day, and Morita the day after that. Other accounts, including a comic in the semi-official SDF magazine Mamor, show Matsumoto being aware of Kongo’s ill health on that early flight to Tohoku.

Had anyone noticed his condition earlier, perhaps Kongo could have stayed home. But that seems unlikely. The 2011 quake was the worst national emergency since the World War II. The navy needed its rescue dogs. Moreover, a canine team requires two dogs to operate and there was no substitute to take Kongo’s place.

We can’t say for sure whether Kongo’s sudden death can be blamed on the deployment itself or if it was merely the final blow of a recurring illness.

We do know that Kongo worked tirelessly. While we can never be certain if the friendly and enthusiastic dog was mentally affected by his gruesome labor, his experiences there undeniably physically tough. Bleeding paws and legs, swimming in cold water, strong overpowering smells and the stress of travel all weighed heavily on the already sick dog.

Kongo wasn’t the only canine casualty. Eight-year old RDTA dog Randy, who was healthy prior to his deployment, fell sick on his return from Tohoku and passed away suddenly. Randy had been with Kongo and Myoken in Watari.

Mortality studies after the 9/11 attacks suggest that dogs were not at any statistically significant risk of death following deployment, with one 2006 study placing mortality in 9/11 rescue dogs at 29.9 percent, compared to 21.8 percent in the general population. But for a dog to die as young as Kongo did suggests that something was wrong.

There were no veterinarians with the team in Tohoku, nor does there seem to have been any on the base in Kure. Instead the team relied on civilian vets from off post. Just as a disaster relief team would monitor the health of its workers with trained medical personnel, so too should the SDF consider deploying medical support for its rescue dogs. The military should also consider adding a third dog to its teams so injured or sick animals can rest.

While SDF dog handlers often joke that the dogs are senior non-commissioned officers—more accurately, PO-2s—the truth is that the SDF officially lists its guard dogs as equipment, as evidenced by Kongo’s full name, Kongou-maru.

Maru (丸) is a suffix for equipment.

This classification as equipment has some knock-on effects on care. SDF dogs stay on base for life, as described by Morita during an RDTA briefing in 2011.

Since we cannot simply put the aged dogs to sleep, we take proper care of them until they die. We have built fenced kennels for these dogs that also require special care. We asked the staff in charge of facilities management to assemble a fence using purchased materials. The dog trainers themselves then constructed the kennels. We utilize our own manpower as much as possible for such construction efforts. When a dog dies, we always give them a proper burial and hold ceremonies in their memory.

SDF bases around the country hold annual memorial services for their dogs and enshrine on post as a sign of respect and gratitude, but the SDF could do better supporting dogs while they’re alive.

Unlike in other countries such as the U.S. or the U.K., where military working dogs get adopted out, the SDF’s guard dogs remain in government custody. It doesn’t help that there is almost zero civilian demand for re-homing animals, despite lower abandonment rates than in the U.K., for instance. Japan re-homes only 11 percent of animals in shelters—and euthanizes 82 percent.

That is not to suggest that the handlers view their canine comrades merely as equipment. No doubt they deeply care for their animals. But it seems inhumane to deny the dogs the chance to live out their later years in the comfort of an adopted home.

The SDF also needs to be aware of the dog’s health and not simply rely on the creature’s apparent enthusiasm as a gauge of its ability to work. It’s neither cheap nor easy to train a rescue dog. Pushing animals to fatal limits is a waste of resources.

For years, Japan’s schools and workplaces have emphasized the values of stoicism and prevailing in the face of adversity. Since 1987, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has kept tabs on “death from overwork,” or karoshi. The Japanese see conducting one’s duties to the point of harm as admirable. It’s this harmful ethic that Sakurabayashi promotes.

Perhaps some of the lessons we learn from Kongo’s death are equally applicable to the SDF as a whole. Attention to service members’ health and well-being is not the same as promoting weakness.