Books like Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People, and War

Although Yukio Tsuchiya's 1988 picture book Faithful Elephants (well actually, the author wrote the story in the immediate post WWII period, in 1951, but this here picture book was originally published in 1988) most definitely has a strong and also powerful anti-war (and thus also a pro peace) message, the fact that the zoo animals were deemed necessary to be killed in the first place (and that the elephants were slowly starved to death, and thus basically tortured in my opinion, instead of the zookeepers for example shooting them, and thereby giving them at least a quick demise and not a long and agonising decline and death) makes me physically ill to my stomach and indeed totally, utterly furious. Yes, war is terrible and horrible, and I appreciate that the author points out how even the animals at the Tokyo zoo are being affected, are suffering and dying, but I really do wish that there had been at least a bit of criticism meted out by Yukio Tsuchiya against the zoo officials, against the zoo keepers for choosing slow starvation to kill their three elephants when poisoning them was shown not to work (I mean, it was WWII, and I am sure that some high powered firearms could have been found to quickly and painlessly dispatch the poor elephants instead of denying them food and water until they slowly became weaker and weaker, until they finally died, and come on, the elephants were found with their trunks extended in supplication, begging even in death for food and water). And thus, while I absolutely do NOT in any way consider Faithful Elephants as Japanese propaganda or in any manner as anti-Americanism (as some very vile and hate-filled ranting reviews I have read online seem to rabidly and moronicaly claim), I also cannot either enjoy or recommend this book, as the method used to kill the elephants was and remains simply massively cruel and inhumane (even though the zoo keepers obviously did feel horrible with regard to the latter and while I do oh so much appreciate the anti-war sentiments expressed and shown by them). For indeed, even though I still would have been sad and likely even crying had the three elephants been shot to death, I could have at least known and felt a bit cheered and relieved that they had died quickly and not in this cruelly long and drawn-out fashion, in a manner that these faithful and gentle giants must have experienced as willful neglect by their zookeepers, whom they obviously considered like companions, like friends. And thus, only one star for Faithful Elephants, as the evocativeness of the Yukio Tsuchiya's narrative, its obvious anti-war and very much pacifistic messages notwithstanding (and while Ted Lewin's accompanying watercolour illustrations are indeed simply and divinely beautiful, heart wrenching) cannot take away my sense of personal disgust and massive emotional anger at how the elephants were put to death, that they were basically slowly and torturously killed through the wilful denial of food and water, through starvation (that the animals kept begging for sustenance and must have felt neglected and puzzled, must have felt as though they were perhaps even being punished in some manner) and that this is all simply related by Yukio Tsuchiya as rather matter of fact without ANY kind of even mild criticism or condemnation of the zookeepers (or that perhaps, quickly shooting them might have been an option to at least consider), it just makes me too sad and too personally angry to consider a higher rating.