This year, the Sunshine English textbooks were updated. \u00a0One of the new stories is called “Faithful Elephants” and is about the sad end of three elephants at \u00a0Tokyo’s Ueno Zoo during WWII:<\/p>\n
Many years ago, there were three wonderful elephants at the Ueno Zoo.\u00a0 The elephants were John, Tonky, and Wanly.\u00a0 They could do tricks.\u00a0 Visitors at the zoo loved the see their tricks.<\/p>\n
Japan was at war then.\u00a0 Little by little the situation was getting worse.\u00a0 Bombs were dropped on Tokyo every day.<\/p>\n
If bombs hit the zoo, dangerous animals will get away and harm the people of Tokyo.\u00a0 So, the Army ordered the zoo to kill all the dangerous animals such as lions, tigers, and bears.\u00a0 Before long, it was time to kill the three elephants.\u00a0 The zookeepers did not want to kill them, but they had to follow the orders.\u00a0 They started with John.<\/p>\n
John loved potatoes, so they gave him poisoned potatoes together with good ones.\u00a0 But John was so clever that he ate only the good potatoes.\u00a0 Then they tried to give him an injection.\u00a0 But John’s skin was too hard for the needles to go through.<\/p>\n
When this did not work, they decided to give him no food.\u00a0 Poor John died in seventeen days.<\/p>\n
Then the time came for Tonky and Wanly.\u00a0 They always looked at people with loving eyes. They were sweet and gentle-hearted.<\/p>\n
However, the elephant keepers had to stop giving them anything to eat.\u00a0 When a keeper walked by their cage, they stood up and raised their trunks high in the air.\u00a0 They did their tricks because they were hoping to get food and water.<\/p>\n
Everyone at the zoo said with tears, “If they can live a few more days, the war may be over and they will be saved.”<\/p>\n
Tonky and Wanly could no longer move.\u00a0 They lay down on the ground, but their eyes were beautiful.<\/p>\n
When an elephant keeper came to see them, they looked so weak.\u00a0 He became too sad to go back to see them.<\/p>\n
Bombs continued to drop in Tokyo.\u00a0 And a few days later, Tonky and Wanly died.\u00a0 Later, when the bodies of the elephants were examined, nothing was found in their stomachs — not even one drop of water.<\/p>\n
Today, the three elephants rest in peace with other animals under the monument at the Ueno Zoo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are many, many things wrong with this story. \u00a0Some grammatical, some stylistic.<\/p>\n
However, I’m not concerned with these here.\u00a0 What I find unacceptable about this story’s inclusion in a textbook approved by MEXT (The Ministry of Education) is that it contains blatant historical inaccuracies, that when taken into consideration, completely undermine the importance of this story as a (purported) piece of history.<\/p>\n
First, the story makes several statements or allusions that are simply untrue. \u00a0In the second paragraph it says:<\/p>\n
Bombs were dropped on Tokyo every day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This is false.<\/p>\n
Consider this timeline (which I will refer to later on).<\/p>\n
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- December 1941 – Attack on Pearl Harbor<\/li>\n
- April 1942<\/strong> – Doolittle bombing raids on Tokyo<\/li>\n
- August 13th, 1943 – Starvation of John the elephant begins.<\/li>\n
- August 1943 – John dies.<\/li>\n
- September 4th, 1943 – A memorial service is held for all three<\/em> elephants.<\/li>\n
- September 11th, 1943 – Wanly the elephant dies.<\/li>\n
- September 23rd, 1943 – Tonky the elephant dies.<\/li>\n
- June 15th, 1944<\/strong> – B-29 Raid on Kyushu launched from China.\u00a0 The first raid on the Japanese home islands since the Doolittle raid.<\/li>\n
- Nov 17th, 1944 – B-29 raids on Tokyo begin and last until Japan’s surrender.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
As you can see from this timeline, Tokyo was not bombed for a full two and a half years<\/em><\/strong> during the war – the time that the textbook alleges “Bombs were dropped on Tokyo everyday.”<\/p>\n
This fact exposes another inconsistency in the story. \u00a0The very next paragraph says:<\/p>\n
If bombs hit the zoo, dangerous animals will get away and harm the people of Tokyo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Since there were no bombs being dropped, this premise is false. \u00a0The paragraph continues:<\/p>\n
So, the Army ordered the zoo to kill all the dangerous animals such as lions, tigers, and bears.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If there were no bombs falling on Tokyo, then what was the reason for the killing of the animals? \u00a0Even if there were bombs falling, if the bombs landed close enough to damage and open the metal cages, surely this would also injure or kill the animals. \u00a0If their safety alone was the concern, then they could have been relocated to the countryside. \u00a0There certainly could be other explanations – lack of food, lack of funds to maintain the zoo. After all, this was war. \u00a0But of course, as in war, the true story of why, how, and by whom, the elephants were ordered to be killed is more complicated.<\/p>\n
A few google searches revealed two useful resources on this incident. \u00a0This article in Japan Focus<\/a>, which chronicles in great detail the power struggle and series of events that led to the elephants’ deaths, and this webpage<\/a>\u00a0(in Japanese) devoted to the treatment of zoo animals in wartime. \u00a0They both delve much further into the motivations and chronology than I will here in this textbook critique, but their main points are very important:<\/p>\n
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- The governor of Tokyo at that time, Odachi Shigeo, had recently returned from a posting as governor of Singapore, where he had seen the war firsthand. \u00a0He felt that the people of Japan needed a shock to wake them up to the realities of war, and chose to use the elephants as martyrs to this end. \u00a0As zoo director Koda wrote in his memoir about Governor Odachi, “when he returned to the motherland to become governor of Tokyo and saw the attitude of the people, he seems to have felt keenly that he had to open the people\u2019s eyes to the fact that this was not the way to go, that war was not such an easy affair.”<\/em> (\u5e02\u9577\u3092\u3057\u3066\u3044\u305f\u5927\u9054\u3055\u3093\u306f\u3001\u5185\u5730\u306b\u5e30\u3063\u3066\u3001\u52dd\u3061\u6226\u3068\u601d\u3044\u6226\u4e89\u306e\u6016\u3055\u3082\u77e5\u3089\u306a\u3044\u3067\u3044\u308b\u56fd\u6c11\u306b\u81ea\u899a\u3055\u305b\u308b\u305f\u3081\u306b<\/strong>\u3001\u52d5\u7269\u5712\u306e\u731b\u7363\u3092\u51e6\u5206\u3059\u308b\u3053\u3068\u306b\u3088\u3063\u3066\u8b66\u544a\u3092\u767a\u3057\u305f\u306e\u3067\u3057\u3087\u3046\u3002)<\/li>\n
- Not only had Fukuda, the acting director of the zoo after Koga, “confidently listed” the amounts of poison needed to kill the elephants, but zoo records show that Tonky had been given injections of medicines and had had blood taken soon before his starvation. \u00a0The story in the textbook says “Then they tried to give him an injection.\u00a0 But John’s skin was too hard for the needles to go through,” which seems unreasonable considering that injections and blood samples had been easily administered on Tonky. \u00a0Why was John different?<\/li>\n
- The story fails to explain why John was the first to go. \u00a0As it turns out, John had been a violent elephant, and this was the reason for putting him down first. \u00a0The zoo director “decided to put down the violent male elephant, John, and his starvation was begun on August 13th. (\u66b4\u308c\u3093\u574a\u306e\u30aa\u30b9\u306e\u30be\u30a6\u300c\u30b8\u30e7\u30f3\u300d\u3092\u51e6\u5206\u3059\u308b\u3053\u3068\u3092\u6c7a\u3081\u3066\u30018\u670813\u65e5\u3088\u308a\u7d76\u98df\u3092\u884c\u3046\u3002)<\/li>\n
- Maybe most horrible of all these revelations is that on September 4th, 1943, after John had died, and while Tonky and Wanly were still undergoing forced starvation<\/strong>, a public memorial service was held at the zoo to mourn the deaths of the three elephants. \u00a0I repeat: this was while Tonky and Wanly were still starving nearby.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These three elephants may have been wonderful animals. \u00a0It’s sad that they ended up as ancillary victims of a human war. \u00a0But the true tragedy of this story is not simply in their deaths, but in how they died, in the equivocating, cruel methods used to kill them. \u00a0It is completely unexplained in the story, and both of the resources that I found, why the elephants were simply not shot. \u00a0Would this not have been more satisfactory, both to the army and the zookeepers? \u00a0Excuses are made in the diaries of the zoo director Fukuda, that the noise of the gunshots would “scare” the population. \u00a0But, was this not the intended effect? \u00a0To “open the people’s eyes” to the hard realities of war?<\/p>\n
Due to the textbook’s simplicity and gross inaccuracy, the true, complicated nature of this story as a piece of history, and its moral dimensions of human cruelty, are skirted and warped into a sentimental and dangerously simplified platitude on war and peace. \u00a0This whitewashed version of history does not belong in an nationally approved curriculum. \u00a0It certainly has no place in an English textbook.<\/p>\n
If you use this textbook, and are asked to model-read or deal with this story in class, make sure your students know the whole story. \u00a0Help them be critical thinkers. \u00a0Help them ask questions about this story and about their own history. \u00a0Help them understand not only the story in English, but the critical and skeptical stance that one should bring to any encounter with a new text.<\/p>\n
\nAddenda:
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