Indian elephants en route to Okinawa?

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http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/national/20070416TDY19002.htm

Zoo ready to welcome elephants

 

The Yomiuri Shimbun

 

If talks with India prove successful, Okinawa Zoo will put a couple of

elephant calves on public view in the hope that they will live happily there

for many years to come, and possibly breed.

 

This will be the third time the zoo, located in Okinawa city, has introduced

an elephant or attempted to do so. An elephant calf it imported in 1973

escaped and mysteriously vanished and 10 years later the zoo received an

elephant from another Japanese zoo, but it died in 2001.

 

Okinawa Zoo has been negotiating with the Indian government for the past

three years in response to wishes by local residents who hope once again

that an elephant will take up residence in the prefecture. Even though

negotiations are still under way, the zoo completed an elephant house and

enclosure in December.

 

The zoo opened in 1972, and is currently operated by the Okinawa Kids

Kingdom Foundation as part of a theme park.

 

The following year, a 10-month-old male elephant weighing 220 kilograms that

had been shipped from Bangkok escaped from a warehouse at Naha Airport

before dawn on the day after its arrival.

 

The elephant apparently broke out of a 1.3-meter-high wooden box, forced

open the warehouse door and apparently ran onto the U.S. air base adjacent

to the airport.

 

Despite a sweeping search by police and Self-Defense Forces and U.S.

military personnel, who mobilized helicopters and sniffer dogs, the elephant

was never found.

 

" The air base was so huge, " recalled Isamu Inamine, 63, a former police

officer who took part in the search. " To me, its overwhelming presence

symbolized the gravity of the U.S. occupation after World War II. "

 

In 1983, the Okinawa Zoo received an elephant from a zoo in Aichi

Prefecture, but it died 18 years later.

 

The Okinawa city administration plans to offer animals indigenous to Japan

to the Indian government in return for the elephants.

 

The municipal government spent 160 million yen to construct the

950-square-meter elephant house and enclosure. It also has earmarked 30

million yen for transporting the calves.

 

Local people feel a special attachment to elephants, according to Akira

Nakane, 74, a former member of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly.

 

" The memory of the elephant that vanished 34 years ago still hurts. If we

can get the elephant calves from India, we must look after them with loving

care, " said Nakane, who has helped clean the zoo as a volunteer for the past

30 years.

(Apr. 16, 2007)