Faithful Elephants

"Faithful Elephants", a story written by Yukio Tsuchiya and originally published in Japan in 1951,Cite web|url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE2D8173FF931A25750C0A96F948260|title=Children's Books: Bookshelf|accessdate=2008-02-08|year=1989-03-12|work=The New York Times] was published and marketed as a true story of the elephants in Tokyo's Ueno Zoo during World War II.cite book|title=Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War| last=Tsuchiya| first=Yukio| coauthors=Tomoko Tsuchiya Dykes (trans), Ted Lewin (Illus)| date=1988| pages=32| publisher=HMCo Children's Books| id=0395861373] According to the picture book, the Japanese Army had requested that every zoo in Japan poison their large or dangerous animals because they were worried that these animals would escape and harm the general public if a bomb detonated near the zoo.Cite web|url=http://www.thewildones.org/Curric/faithful.html|title=Faithful Elephants|accessdate=2008-02-08|year=1996|author=Seana Cameron|work=The Wild Times Teacher Connection] Cite web|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,888544,00.html|title=The Charming Elephant|accessdate=2008-02-08|year=1949-07-04|work=Time ] The poison that worked on the other animals did not work on the three remaining Indian elephants so they were starved to death. These elephants and the other animals killed are now commemorated at the zoo with a cenotaph. Tsuchiya wrote the book in order to let children know the grief, fear and sadness caused by war. Cite web|url=http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2003-04-07-kids-peace_x.htm|title=Gentle Titles Teach Kids to Give Peace a Chance|accessdate=2008-02-08|year=2003-04-07|author=Jacqueline Blais|work=USA Today]

Youth Literature scholars, notably Professor Emeritus Kay E. Vandergrift, Rutgers, Department of Library and Information Science, have contested the claim that the story is factual.Cite article |author=Kawabata, Ariko and Kay E. Vandergrift. |title=History Into Myth: The Anatomy of a Picture Book |publisher=Bookbird. 36:2 (Summer 1998) p6-12.] Dr. Betsy Hearne, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes: “Certainly a story can be culturally confusing, as was Yukio Tsuchiya's The Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People, and War (1988), which turned out to be a legend, and a complex one at that.” Cite web |author=Hearne, Betsy |title=Swapping Tales and Stealing Stories: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Folklore in Children's Literature.|url=http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~ehearne//swappingtales.html |accessdate=2008-08-12]

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