Faithful Elephants

With war always comes sacrifice. Although it is not always easy to give up something or someone you love, one must bargain and toy until they reach perfection. The picture book Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya tells a true story that occurred during World War II. It is about three elephants at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo—John, Tonky, and Wanly—that had to be put to death in order for the village to remain safe. Through this story I learned that there is always hope even during times of strife.

The conflict of the plot is stated a few pages into the book—due to the war that Japan is participating in, there is always risk of bombs falling on the city of Tokyo. And what if the bombs hit the zoo? Cages would break and animals would escape and run wild in the city. By command of the army, most of the zoo animals were ordered to be poisoned to death. This most certainly applied to the elephants. “... the elephant keepers mixed poisoned potatoes with the good ones when it was time to feed him. John, however, was a very clever elephant. He ate the good potatoes, but each time he brought a poisoned potato to his mouth with his trunk, he threw it to the ground,” as it states in the text. Although the reader expects the elephant to die, John survives. Even though many small occurrences during times of hardship, such as John outsmarting the zoo keepers, often go unnoticed, they are small symbols for hope. Maybe these “faithful elephants” will survive.

Unfortunately, despite his great efforts, John was eventually put to death. The other two elephants, Tonky and Wanly, were next. The author writes, “the zoo keepers wanted so much to keep Tonky and Wanly alive that they thought of sending them to the zoo in Sendai, far north of Tokyo.” This is a dangerous time for their country, and to even picture this thought shows great devotion from the zoo keepers. Although they understood that there truly wasn’t anything they could do to prevent the deaths of these innocent, beloved animals, they held on to the tiny sliver of hope they had left.

Towards the end of the story, the zoo workers were forced to starve the elephants. They became thinner and thinner, weaker and weaker, and the humans had to watch this suffering. “The trainer could stand it no longer. ‘Oh, Tonky! Oh, Wanly!’ he wailed, and dashed to the food shed. He carried food and pails of water to them and threw it at their feet. ‘Here!’ he said, sobbing, and clung to their thin legs. ‘Eat your food! Please drink. Drink your water!’” This was a powerful action of the elephant trainer. He clearly has deep affection and respect for his animals—and to risk his own life for another proves that somewhere inside him he is hoping, truly hoping, for the survival of the elephants.

At the end of the book, the storyteller pats the tombstone of the elephants as cherry blossoms gently fall onto the grave. Despite the sacrifices made in the past, there is a sense of peace, of closure- the elephants and their trainers held on to each other as long as they could, and although John, Tonky, and Wanly did eventually pass away, they symbolized hope for the war. In conclusion, Faithful Elephants by Yukio Tsuchiya was a story that relayed the message that there is always hope—hope if you believe in it—during even the most hostile and war-like times.