, is a story written by Yukio Tsuchiya and originally published in Japan in 1951, was published and marketed as a true story of the elephants in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

Ueno Zoo The is a zoo, managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and located in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is Japan's oldest zoo, opened on March 20, 1882. It is served by Ueno Station, Keisei Ueno Station and Nezu Station, with convenient access ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. 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. The poison that worked on the other animals did not work on the three remaining

Indian elephant The Indian elephant (''Elephas maximus indicus'') is one of four extant recognised subspecies of the Asian elephant and native to mainland Asia. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List as the wild po ...

s, so they were starved to death. These elephants and the other animals killed are now commemorated at the zoo with a

cenotaph A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the vast majority of cenot ...

. Tsuchiya wrote the book in order to let children know the grief, fear, and sadness caused by war. Youth Literature scholars, notably Professor Emeritus Kay E. Vandergrift,

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...

, Department of Library and Information Science, have contested the claim that the story is factual, referring to it as "historical fiction for children". Dr. Betsy Hearne,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

, 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.” The story served as a major plot point in episode 5 of the anime adaptation of ''

Mitsuboshi Colors is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Katsuwo. The manga was serialized in ASCII Media Works' '' Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh'' magazine from 2014 to June 27, 2020. An anime television series adaptation directed by Tomoyuki Kaw ...

''.

References

External links

Brief comparison of "Faithful Elephants" and the real events at Ueno Zoo
1951 children's books Japanese books Books about elephants World War II in popular culture {{child-book-stub