Talk:187th Infantry Regiment (United States)

Page should be moved
This page should be moved to U.S. 187th Infantry Regiment to conform to other units in Wikipedia. WikiDon 02:53, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

EDITED for OPSEC reasons. DO NOT post information about current troop deployments/locations. Sorry, I forgot to login when I edited the page. I corrected it now. Cman 12:58, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

"Rakkasan" simply means "parachute"
Though disavowed in the previous edition, the Japanese word "rakkasan" (no hyphen is needed) is a compound word made of "rakka" (falling) and "san" (umbrella, parasol) and means "parachute". It means the apparatus to make a descent and never means any personnel or military unit. And maybe this word's origin is German. Around World War II, many German words were translated in Japanese. German word "Fallschirm(jaeger)" means '(Soldier with) falling umbrella'.

The paratroopers are called "rakkasan hei" (parachute soldier) or "koka hei" (descent soldier) and the unit is called "rakkasan butai" (parachute corps) or "koka butai" (descent corps.)

Even nonhuman beings can be endearingly given the honorific "-san" in Japanese, but the word "rakka" means an action and it sounds very strange if an action is given a "-san".

So "rakkasan" is one word and the "-san" isn't an honorific. The translation "umbrella man" is also wrong, and "falling down umbrella" is literally correct, but actually it does mean "parachute". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.101.158.2 (talk) 04:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

As spelled in Japanese Kana alphabet, the "san" in Rakkasan is an honorific.

BUT......that does not mean my analysis is correct.

In fact, this analysis gets more and more hairy.

Written in Kanji symbols, the words used are "falling" "down or below" and "umbrella", none of which translate to "san." However, the Kanji symbols for "umbrella below" are pronounced "sanka". "Ka" in this case means below, even though "san" standing alone does not literally translate as umbrella. So, if you reversed the the order of the two to, perhaps, mean "below umbrella", you would get, "kasan." This is not normal Japanese construction, but it would render complete and literal pronounciation of the entire Kanji term to be "Rakkakasan". (Try saying that three times really fast.) That would be "falling" "down" "below" "umbrella"  "Rakkasan" might, therefore, be a shortened version of the gutteral sounding term (having an extra "ka") as written in Kanji. Also, we may note, so constructed, an alternate and not attractive translation would be "Mister falling kaka." Another good reason to shorten the word, it seems to me.

Conclusion: I have dug deeply into dangerous turf, and withdraw from the field before I get into really serious trouble!


 * Agree that rakkasan simply means parachute. And it meant parachute before the 187th Infantry Regiment was in Japan (as can be confirmed by looking at old editions of Japanese dictionaries).  Quote "Written in Kanji symbols, the words used are "falling" "down or below" and "umbrella", none of which translate to "san."" Unquote. This is incorrect 傘 (kanji for umbrella) has an ON reading of SAN (as seen in 開傘 / kaisan / opening of umbrella).  This can be confirmed with any kanji dictionary.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.29.255.88 (talk) 19:38, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

No matter how you spell it, the Rakkasans are heros.74.241.184.182 (talk) 18:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Rank of Ryan Conklin
I added Sergeant Ryan Conklin to the list of notable Rakkasan's. However i do not know if he should be under his current rank (Sergeant) or his rank upon he left the 187 with (Specialst) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.24.30.59 (talk) 17:30, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2006/20060405_4714.html
 * In 187th Infantry Regiment (United States) on 2011-05-25 02:10:05, 404 Not Found
 * In 187th Infantry Regiment (United States) on 2011-06-01 23:26:02, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 23:26, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Date format? -- WW 2 and aftermath
I notice that the dates in this section are given as YY-MM-DD. That format doesn't seem to be general American (MM/DD/YY) or American military (DD Mmm YY). In fact, I don't ever remember seeing that format (YY-MM-DD) in general English language text: American, British (DD/MM/YY) or International English. Yes, I know that it's called "Big End" format and it's used in listings and data base programs. I think the format should be changed to what's being used in the majority of the article, which seems to be a modified US military format, "DD full month spelling YY". What is Wiki policy for US military articles?--TGC55 (talk) 10:01, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Great minds think alike. I corrected this on 1 December to standardize the date format, although I haven't perused the whole article for consistency. Generally, most Wikipedia military articles I've read use the DD Month YYYY format; e.g., 20 October 1950, rather than 20 Oct 50 or 20Oct50. Back in the old days of military electromechanical radioteletype communications, fewer alphanumeric characters, spaces, and punctuation in the message (date/time stamp, message body, etc.) meant shorter transmission times. FYI, the Wikipedia standard is there is no standard...but they're working on it. See WP:DATESPROJ, Date and time notation in the United States, and Date and time notation in the United Kingdom. Regards, Charles Shaulis (talk) 08:26, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Trivial comment about an impersonation
"Spc James Paterson was known for being the best CSM Purdy impersonator and actually performed the impersonation for CSM Purdy."

Is this really worthy of inclusion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbunker (talk • contribs) 22:13, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

187th locations
according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Evans_(Vietnam) the 3-187 was at Camp Evans. this is not recorded. AMDS (talk) 14:12, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

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New Guinea Glider Training
What did replacement week-long glider training consist of? Mock-up? One flight? Two? Thanks. 2601:8D:503:9780:549A:EDDA:4953:AD17 (talk) 12:56, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Questionable Web Resource
In re the References list, the imbedded URL in the title for Flanagan's book directs to the book's description on the Google Books website. What is the purpose of the imbedded URL? IMO if a URL does not point the article's reader to relevant information that supports the inline source citation WP:IC, it should not be included. Charles Shaulis (talk) 05:47, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Imbedded URL to Google Books website removed on 20 Dec 2020 Charles Shaulis (talk) 09:46, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Questionable Editing
In the subsection marked Vietnam War someone has squeezed in their own take on the actions of a Medal of Honor recipient. Could someone either confirm the the information added to be true or to simply delete the words that have been added. I'd like to know what actions are going to be taken as well. Thank you for your time Michael Davis MikeDavis78 (talk) 19:44, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I found the text in question that was entered on 3/4 December 2020. See 187th Infantry Regiment (United States): Revision history entries 12:10, 3 December 2020‎ from IP address 98.115.236.152 and 16:45, 4 December 2020‎ from IP address 98.115.236.152. A User Contribution Search for all 187th Infantry Regiment article entries from this IP address returned these as the only two entries by an individual who probably does not have a user account. I own General Flanagan's book, so was able to look up the page reference cited. Flanagan appears to have paraphrased Captain Bucha's MOH citation, which states "Capt. Bucha crawled through the hail of fire to singlehandedly destroy the bunker with grenades." See https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/paul-w-bucha for the complete citation. Since the post-Korean War history of the 187th Infantry Regiment is beyond my subject matter expertise, I removed the POV text since it violates Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and edited the section to make it more neutral IMO. Regarding actions to be taken, I doubt there will be any on Wikipedia's part. The controversial text has been in the article since 3 December and none of the Wikipedia policy and guideline posse removed it. I hope this helped. Charles Shaulis (talk) 05:23, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Added public domain attribution
I noticed you added the generic public domain notice to the ACMH public domain notice for the Mossman reference. Why is this required for Mossman, and not Appleman, Cannon, or Smith, which are also covered under the ACMH notice? Charles Shaulis (talk) 05:58, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * It's not required, but it shows which specific passages were copied.— Diannaa (talk) 19:56, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

Reducing the article size by condensing it.
This article has around 400,000 characters of readable prose, so there is too much to read. The article should be condensed with summaries and the detailed content should be transferred to new articles. zsteve21 (talk) 22:37, 14 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Following you around to where you are posting things. Please note WP:HASTE quoting: "As browsers have improved, there is no need for haste in splitting an article when it starts getting large. Sometimes an article simply needs to be big to give the subject adequate coverage. If uncertain, or with high profile articles, start a discussion on the talkpage regarding the overall topic structure. Determine whether the topic should be treated as several shorter articles and, if so, how best to organize them. If the discussion makes no progress consider adding one of the split tags in order to get feedback from other editors." Ergzay (talk) 03:37, 15 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I do not intend to split this article in this case. I am very confident that the amount of coverage in the article is excessive and therefore should be simplified. zsteve21 (talk) 08:18, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * This article does not merely need to be condensed. It needs to be massively reduced in size. 400,000 characters of prose is absurd. I'm worried that hitting the edit button on this article will make my computer explode, and it is a decently powerful computer! Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:19, 29 October 2021 (UTC)