[Python] Get year, month or day from numpy datetime64

I have an array of datetime64 type:

dates = np.datetime64(['2010-10-17', '2011-05-13', "2012-01-15"])


Is there a better way than looping through each element just to get np.array of years:

years = f(dates)
#output:
array([2010, 2011, 2012], dtype=int8) #or dtype = string


I'm using stable numpy version 1.6.2.

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