Faithful Elephants

Faithful Elephants In Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People, and War by Yukio Tsuchiya, Japan was at war and the military ordered that the zoo keepers at the Ueno zoo kill all animals. This had an emotional toll on the zoo keepers and trainers. The zoo keepers loved all of the animals dearly, especially the three elephants, Tonky, Wanly, and John. The war affected everyone at the zoo in different ways. Throughout the story, many characters had conflicts but the central conflict was the killing of the three elephants. One way how the war affected the zoo keepers is that they had to kill the animals against their will. If it was up to the zoo keepers the animals wouldn’t have died. The military didn’t want the animals to be set free if a bomb were to hit the zoo. Although the author didn’t include that a bomb actually did hit the zoo, there was a strong chance that one would have because in the story it said that bombs dropped often during the war. “The zoo keepers wanted so much to keep Tonky and Wanly alive that they even thought of sending them to a zoo in Sendai, far north of Tokyo.” This shows how much they zoo keepers loved the elephants; they were going to go against the military just to save the elephants’ lives. The zoo keepers decided not to send them to the other zoo because there was still a possibility of something going wrong. During the time of the war the zoo keepers had to make some difficult decisions because of the effect that the war had on them. At the time of the war a lot of things were going on. Not only did the war affect the zoo keepers but the war also affected the animals. The animals were forced to have their lives end so suddenly. Because of the thick skin and smart thinking it was difficult to kill the elephants. As a result the elephants were starved to death, this didn’t happen right away though. John died seventeen days after the zoo keepers