Case file · Declassified record
Taro and Jiro, the dogs who survived the winter
In January 1959 a Japanese relief team returning to Showa Station found two Sakhalin huskies, the brothers Taro and Jiro, alive after eleven months alone; fifteen dogs had been left chained when bad ice forced an emergency evacuation in February 1958.
1959 CE · -69.00, 39.58 · status: official
The account
Seven dogs died on their chains and six vanished; how the two young brothers fed themselves through the polar winter is not known for certain. They became national symbols of endurance in Japan, with statues and the films 'Antarctica' (1983) and 'Eight Below' (2006). Jiro died at Showa in 1960 and Taro in Japan in 1970.