Kawaisouna zou

August 15th is the day that World War II ended. There are quite a few Japanese children books that talk about the war. "Kawaisouna zou," which was published in 1970, is a long selling book. It is a true story about three elephants at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during World War II. I read it when I was at elementary school. I remember it was very sad and I strongly hoped that war never happens again. I haven’t read it for a quite a long time, but I recently read news that a CD of this book was released with both Japanese and English on one disk. The American singer, Cindy Lauper, reads the English version of the story. I hope it will help to spread an antiwar message. Japanese translation