Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Japanese War Atrocities

List of Japanese War Atrocities was proposed for deletion. This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS TO DELETE

Running tally:

Keep (6): Tyler111, Shaun MacPherson, Stmaul*, pchea*, RaD Man, SecretAgentMan00, Wareware, mikkalai

(Votes marked with * are from users with no previous edits.)

Keep, perhaps rename (3): Wile E. Heresiarch, Bourquie, Bryan

Keep, rename (3): Toytoy, Chrisvls, JohnyDog

Delete (8): Nanshu, JamesMLane, jpgordon, KeithTyler, Lacrimosus, Tkh, Pnot, zeimusu

Anonymous votes, not counted: 216.153.214.94 - keep

Inherent POV. --Nanshu 06:36, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Delete, but possibly take NPOV steps to make the material more readily accessible. For example, the entry that I happened to check, Sook Ching Massacre, isn't linked to from History of Japan or from World War II. I don't know what to recommend -- this article is POV, adding all these links to History of Japan would clutter it, and there's no other good place. Ideally we'd have a separate article on Japan in World War II or some such. JamesMLane 07:15, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Yeah. Delete. Even if such a list weren't inherently POV, this one certainly is; and it cheapens the meaning of the word "atrocity" to include Pearl Harbor and revisionist history. --jpgordon{gab} 07:36, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. There needs to be a way to relay this message about WWII in order to learn from the past tragedies. How is WWII info about Navi-Germany and the Holocaust organized. Maybe we can follow that organization. Fix what ever you think is a POV. Is a quote by a Chinese woman affected by Unit 731 a point of view??? These links already existed in Chinese wikipedia sites. This is a huge part of Chinese and Korean history. If Japan doesn't want it mentioned in their section that is OK. But it still needs to be presented. The people that were in Pearl Harbor may have an opinion also.

(Note, above should be User:4.23.83.100, with edit by User:Tyler111 who may be same person. -KeithTyler)

Yes, I forgot to sign it, it was me Tyler111.

• Keep. However, it needs a more specific title similar to List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war or List of massacres committed during the Al-Aqsa Intifada or Violence against Israel. I mean maybe something like "List of war atrocities committed during the 1931-1945 Sino-Japanese War" (in fact, it started long before July 7, 1937 or September 18, 1931). Not including mass murders of the Chinese people but also of the Japanese people (e.g. certain strategic bombings against civilian targets done by the U.S., Chinese armed forces were too weak to attack Japan then). I don't think Japanese are mass killing Chinese people today and vice versa. It will be better to change the title. Why can't I use Move this page now? -- Toytoy 16:45, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)

• Keep and Rename. Agree with Toytoy. Chrisvls 20:59, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Delete -- title is POV and therefore article will be as well. I don't think a rename will help, unless it is to something quantifiable (List of Japanese attacks during WWII or List of Japanese war crimes or something else that is not a subjective term), and the content changed to fit within it. - KeithTyler 21:19, Nov 1, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete, agree w/ James M Lane. What constitutes an atrocity is subjective, at any rate. Lacrimosus 22:24, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep: I think we seem to be going down the road of political correctness and self censorship if we delete articles under the guise of POV because it sounds 'bad'. Are we to delete the articles on child molestation because it sounds 'bad' also? When a country, any country, commits a war atrocity then call it as such, anything else is disingenuous. The task now is to find a definition of of atrocity, and see if any of Japan's actions fit the definition. --ShaunMacPherson 03:06, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • "Child molestation" is an objectively definable term. "Atrocity" is an inherently subjective term. Your suppositions about the reasons for deletion are nonsense and have nothing to do with the actual reasons. The article is not POV because we believe the topics to be bad things, but because the decisions of content belongs there will be based on each editor's POV and will be contentious by the article's very nature. - KeithTyler 20:31, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)

• KEEP I had to sign up for this discussion. Need to rename and re-organize, but it has a lot of potential. May considering adding Southeast Asia info as well, example: Thailand the world famous Bridge of River Kwai in Kanchanaburi. Estimated 90,000 Asian Slaves died building infrastructure and 16,000 POW died. Arguements between one country vs another becomes his word vs another persons word and can be dismissed as POV. But if you can compile info, say Thailand, China and other countries saying the same crime was committed on them by Japan, maybe Japan will be able to learn and reflect from their past behavior. --Stmaul 19:38, 2 Nov 2004 P.S. Just FYI: I am friends with Tyler111, I don't know if that devalues the power of my vote.
  • Admitted sockpuppet (User:Stmaul). (Stmaul: Calling all your friends to come and sign up on a website after the fact might work for Slashdot polls, but it doesn't work here.) - KeithTyler

• KeepMy friend Tyler111 asked me to give him an objective opinion on this info site, whether it had point of view issues. He didn't do anything except make a list. I don't think there are any issues of point of view. I should let people know that I am Chinese-American, but I am being objective and unbiased. And also in my defense I am married to a Japanese woman and I am trying to be very objective.--pchea
  • Another admitted sockpuppet (User:pchea). - KeithTyler

• Keep: important, verifiable. Perhaps find a better title for it. Wile E. Heresiarch 05:20, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• KEEP Although I feel that the title could be changed to a less offensive one, I don't think that it's wrong to simply stating actual historical events. 12:22 MST, 11.2.2004 Bourquie
  • I voted to delete this article but I agree that there's some information here that should be available. The case for Keep would be better if the proponents would follow up on the idea of devising a better name. The title shouldn't use "atrocities" -- inherently POV. Next will be an article on [[List of U.S. war atrocities]] that includes the Trail of Tears, the atomic bombings, the Abu Ghraib scandal, etc., and we can all spend the rest of our lives arguing about what should or should not go on that list. What about creating Japan in World War II, starting that new article with much of the relevant material from History of Japan and leaving behind only a summary. The new article could go on to say something along the lines of: "The Japanese armed forces have been accused of committing multiple war crimes in the course of the conflict. In many of the areas that came under Japanese occupation, there were large numbers of civilian deaths; see more detailed discussions in ...." then some of these links. The article could also include the accusations and results at the post-WW2 war crimes trials conducted by the victors. NPOV permits citation of attributed charges of atrocities, Allies' tribunals judgments of violations of the laws of war, the postwar Japanese government's apologies and acts of reparation, etc. With all this, the information can be conveyed without Wikipedia trying to establish a definition of what's an atrocity. Incidentally, many of the articles linked to in the article now up for deletion, such as 7 WMD Biological Pathogen on Zhejiang, need heavy cleanup. JamesMLane 18:43, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • I voted to keep because unlike Germany, who has a policy of reflecting and openly acknowledging their past behavior, almost all the items on this list are hotly contested or denied by Japan, which is odd cause Japan has made numerous general unofficial apologies and some general official apologies. There seems to be mixed messages to their own people and this information just seems to slowly not get acknoledged anymore. This is also, odd cause most of the information for these acts came from Japanese documents. I think people need access to this information in order to learn from the past. And if an article needs clean up it should be left there for people to clean up and add to it. From all the comments, I can see the title needs to be changed. How about "The Negative impact of Japan during WWII" or "The Contraversial Actions of Japan during WWII" or "Violence and Destruction in Asia and the Pacific during WWII" or the "Forgotten Pains of WWII" Tyler111
  • "Negative"=POV. "Forgotten"=POV. "Violence" and "Controversial" may not be POV but certainly invite it. Unfortunately your least POV title ideas won't be able to contain the items you currently have listed. What we need is an article that doesnt lend itself to becoming an anti-Japanese article. I note that almost all of your WP work promotes Korea, and also Japan's actions -- mostly those against Korea -- during the Sino-Japanese and Second World wars. Those are necessary topics, but when collecting them into a list article, that list needs to be one that is not collecting material to support only one party's opinion. - KeithTyler 18:54, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)
    • I agree with KeithTyler. Also, differing attitudes of German and Japanese governments might reasonably be considered by activists in deciding what cause merited their energy, but are not relevant to Wikipedians creating an encyclopedia and organizing its coverage. These are merely facts that could be noted in some article if appropriate. (I myself am an activist on several causes, but one must apply different standards to these different endeavors.) JamesMLane 21:23, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep it. [[User:Radman1|RaD Man (talk)]] 21:28, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Delete it. The author is full of POV. For example, look at "March 1st Massacre." The linked article is "March 1st Movement," and even Korean name for this event does not contain the word "massacre." --Tkh 02:29, Nov 4, 2004 (UTC)
• Delete, for the following reasons:
  1. As pointed out above, atrocity is an inherently POV term. Apparently the writer regards destroying buildings, stealing artifacts, and growing opium as atrocities; I do not.
  2. Page is essentially content-free: it's a list of unannotated links mostly to ill-written substubs or largely irrelevant articles -- the "Japanese genocide during WWII" item links to Genocide, which doesn't mention Japan at all.
  3. I don't regard this as a valid or useful list -- a page on, say, Japanese war crimes in WWII might make sense ("war crime" is definable, and the crimes are relatively closely related). But what on earth is the connection between the assassination of a Korean empress in 1895 and the use of biological weapons in China in 1940? None that I can see, except that they were both Bad Things done by the Japanese. I despise lopsided, decontextualized lists like these, which only seem to exist to back up POV arguments. Lists of "everything bad that nation X has done, ever" serve no useful purpose that I can see. You might as well have an article on the U.S. linking the Trail of Tears with the use of Depleted uranium ammunition in Iraq, or one on Italy covering both the razing of Carthage and the rise of fascism. Pnot 05:20, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep. May need a name change or merge into an appropriate article, and could certainly use some introductory text rather than just dumping the list before us without explanation, but this is important information. Bryan 06:14, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

KEEP. If this article is deleted just because the Japanese feel uncomfortable, what will be next? Deleting the Holocaust because it make the Germans uneasy? Deleting September 11th because it offends the Muslim community? Deleting the Middle Passage because it shows the true horrors? Give me a break.

Above note by User:SecretAgentMan00. - KeithTyler

• Keep. We got a list of massacres in the Middle East conflict, why not sino-japanese war? Wareware 00:57, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Keep, rename. First, 'atrocities' is highly subjective term, second there is not much point in categorizing it by country - there is no connection between war crimes done by (for example) Germany in WW1, Germany in WW2 and germany nowadays, as it was 3 different regimes and practically 3 different countries. However, there is no POV in writing about proven war crimes. - JohnyDog 02:40, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
  • I agree that writing about "proven war crimes" would not be POV. I suggested above that information of that type could be accommodated in History of Japan or in a new article on Japan in World War II. An article about "atrocities" must go, however. You appear to agree; the problem is that any vote beginning with "Keep" is likely to be tallied that way. If this list were kept, it would need heavy cleanup. Most of the items listed don't qualify as proven war crimes. It doesn't provide a good starting point for any NPOV discussion of the subject. JamesMLane 02:55, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Note to Tyler111, Toytoy and others suggesting rename to "[something-or-other] in WWII": much of the article has nothing to do with World War II, so if we renamed it we'd have to remove things like Queen Min, destruction of Korean palace, etc. If the delete vote doesn't go through, I'd support a rename to something NPOV like War crimes committed during the 1937-1945 Sino-Japanese War, with corresponding editing of the content to reflect the title. Pnot 05:12, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

* Keep 216.153.214.94 05:37, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC) anan no count

• Keep. Mikkalai 07:19, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
• Delete. Some of the content can be reused Zeimusu 13:16, 2004 Nov 8 (UTC)

This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like other '/delete' pages is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion or on the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages. Please do not edit this page.