Talk:Beulah Ream Allen

Incorrect Photo Caption
The military officer pinning the medal on Allen in the photo is not Douglas MacArthur. It is undoubtedly someone else on MacArthur's staff. The original USNLM source does not identify the person as MacArthur. This caption should be changed. Also, it is unfortunate that this error made its way onto the Wikipedia "Did You Know" front page. Quite a shame. --Westwind273 (talk) 00:36, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Not only doesn't it not even look like MacArthur, but the officer is wearing "eagles," indicating his rank is a full colonel. At the time of the award, MacArthur was a four star general. Hard to believe someone made this mistake. Thomas R. Fasulo (talk) 00:55, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Too obvious for words; this needs to also be removed from the text in the article, since the 1946 source makes no mention of MacArthur ... perhaps someone puffed up her 89 obit. Surprised that people do not know what MacArthur looked like, considering how vain he was about pictures. i would question now anything sourced to the 89 obit, as obits are often written by and puffed up by family. She was in the US and MacArthur was in Japan at the time the Army gave her the medal. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  02:04, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

How do articles make it onto DYK? Shouldn't they be vetted before getting posted to such a high profile location. --Westwind273 (talk) 03:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)


 * There were three misses here: WP:FPC, WP:GA and WT:DYK. Someone should barnstar you for being the first to notice it, but it is astounding that such a well-known figure could be missed by so many review processes. This is a common problem actually at DYK and GA, which have low standards, but the featured picture surprises me. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  04:04, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Concentration camps ?
might you have a look at this article? It was pushed through quite fast, and might have other problems (see this summary). I am concerned that this article uses an obit which may not be entirely reliable; now we see that source uses the term "concentration camp" for "internment camps" (along with the MacArthur claim that is so far uncorroborated). Do we have independent sources corroborating the "only four women" claim? I am wondering about the integrity of this obit, and hope you can review the entire article, as it uses the obit quite often. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  15:09, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * your recap is factually incorrect, but you wouldn't know that, since you never spoke to me about it. I had never heard of Beulah Allen and she wasn't a target for an article regarding an editathon. I merely worked out that she fit a topic. I was asked to help another editor sort out confusion on another Dr. Beulah Allen and realized that this woman was also notable. I wrote the article based on secondary sources and nominated it for review at GA. I never heard of the reviewer before and certainly did not ask or try to influence anyone to review it as a rush review. As I typically do, I posted it on Yoninah's page and asked if she thought it was acceptable for DYK. We worked through the confusion over the Freedom Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom and I asked Gog the Mild to assist with military terminology regarding her camp status as I know nothing about the military, military terms, or procedures. It is clear to me that a simple error caused by the way an obituary was worded has become a major issue for you. While I appreciate that you want our information to be factual, as do I, your approach and quickness to assume some behind the scenes conspiracy was going on are unfounded. I am not one to stir controversy and am not going to follow you around to all the pages you are posting on. I would ask you to refrain. I am happy to have other eyes review the article and improve it. SusunW (talk) 16:19, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Please stop personalizing. If the edit-a-thon template at the top of this page is incorrect, then please do remove it.  And since I never stated you tried to influence anyone, or mentioned anything about you, your post makes no sense to me.  Where you got a behind-the-scenes controversy out of anything I have typed is a mystery to me. The fundamental issue here is that at least five different processes and pages looked at this article and did not catch a significant error at the top of the page! Further, the concern here is the integrity of that obit, and Nihonjoe is a Milhist/internment camp editor who is in a position to evaluate that.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  16:36, 28 September 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi Susun, don't forget to ping in editors you mention. Hi : an internment camp can, and often is, a "concentration camp". They are not necessarily different things. I believe that the term "concentration camp" was coined to describe civilian internment camps. (During the Boer War.) Concentration camps usually house civilians - although modern usage is sometimes looser - so a source which "uses the term "concentration camp" for "internment camps"" is probably simply being painstakingly accurate. In case you haven't seen it, can I flag up 's suggestion here that the MacArthur claim may be correct, but is being misinterpreted.
 * Not sure what the heat to light ratio of this is.
 * Gog the Mild (talk) 17:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I understand Ian's point but I still think we may have cause to mistrust that obit, and would like to see independent corroboration of the "four women" claim. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:16, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll look at it in the next few days and post here my thoughts on the obit source. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 17:26, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * At a quick glance through the article, I'd lean toward calling them internment camps rather than concentration camps. Those that have articles (Santo Tomas Internment Camp and Camp Holmes Internment Camp) use "internment", and the third (Camp John Hay) uses "internment" in the article. As for the obituary, I don't think that alone should be the determiner of the terminology in the article as obituaries tend to be written by family members tend to use glowing terms when describing the life of the deceased. For basic facts, they are great, but not for determining what terms we should be using here. If some editors want to use "concentration" instead, they need to get the article titles changed first via RFC. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 17:49, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I might not have been clear on what I was asking you to look at. This article did call them "concentration camps" at one point, but that was corrected early on to "internment camps" even though the source called them "concentration camps".  The article is phrased optimally now.  It is not the term that I question as much as a) do you see any other issues in that source that would lead you to question it, b) do you see any other issues in the article (with your MILHIST/Japan experience), and c) do you have any tricks up your sleeve to dig in to the "only four women" claim?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Based upon WP:RS, an obituary is not inherently unreliable, though the caveat that her obituary is the source can be used to resolve any momentary question. Here, a few simple gnoming edits would have resolved this without need for all this anxiety. There is not really such a huge difference in this particular context between "internment" and "concentration" camps, so the reader was not misled, and the phrasing was tweaked anyway, so again, I fail to understand what the panic is all about. The question regarding the photo has been resolved on the side of caution, so at this point, do we really need to spread this drama over [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_adminship&oldid=980821647#Female_admins,_African-American_admins,_what's_wrong_with_this_picture_? multiple talkpages]? Montanabw (talk) 18:04, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any "panic", as you call it. Sandy was merely trying to find better sources for some of the content in the article. As I noted above, obituaries are often written by family members who tend to embellish or use "use glowing terms". If we can find a list of Medal of Freedom recipients (I have been unsuccessful, so far) from a reliable source, that would be far better than the current use of the obituary, and it may also provide the substantiation needed to support the claim of "only four women". I have a few feelers out, but they may take a couple weeks to pan out. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 19:12, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The issue of mis-captioning has been raised on WT:DYK, WT:MILHIST, The Signpost, here, WT:RFA and that's just among the pages I watch. Yes, it's a mistake that was caught, and yes, Sandy isn't the only one mentioning it, but that strikes me as an over-reaction. Similarly, I don't think any benefit to deriding the image as not that good anyway and suggesting that the review was pushed through quite fast. We cannot be expected to all know what a general who died over 50 years ago looked like, and fact that he was in Japan doesn't mean he couldn't have awarded it in person(people do travel, after all, last I checked), and there was no prior reason to mistrust what the obituary wrote. I don't see why people are making such a big deal out of this – if anything it reflects well upon Wikipedia that we did catch the error within a month of it being introduced and we have users willing to write decently substantial articles to help reduce systematic bias. I completely agree with Montanabw. Best, Eddie891 Talk Work 19:28, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Eddie, one issue about MacArthur is that he didn't travel; most MILHIST people know his story of Japan/Phillipines/US etc. At any rate, we are well beyond that point, as the initial concerns have all been worked through now.  We did not catch THIS error soon enough, and my concern is not THIS error, but that no less than five different pages/processes missed it.  If that doesn't concern us ... then we should at least all be more aware of SYNTH.  The obituary did NOT state that MacArthur pinned the medal on her, nor did the image source.  There are multiple lessons to be learned here in terms of images and image reviews. Also, that it's been raised in many places by many editors should also indicate the level of the problem when an article is moved through content review processes too fast for adequate review.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:39, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I can think of one time MacArthur travelled :) Well, what would you propose changing, then to prevent this from occurring again? I can think of shutting down DYK because there's only one reviewer who could miss something, shutting down FPC because the reviewers mostly focus on image quality and not captions, shutting down GA because a single reviewer cannot possibly check or review everything, or requiring far more reviewers for each step. Not one of those things is going to happen. It's frustrating when people don't catch an error that's obvious to you, but at the end of the day it's just one more reason why we need more diverse editors editing, something I think everyone already agrees with. What would you suggest with relation to how we improve and learn from this mis-captioning? Best, Eddie891 Talk Work 19:46, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep, that was travel :) I should have said that his limited travel back to the US is pretty well documented, as it relates to his "unique personality traits" :)   How can we improve?  The first big fail was at WP:FPC (which does not appear to have anything like the serious quality of reviews it had ten years ago, but neither does any other process, so I'm not saying much with that statement).  The lesson here is SYNTH and sourcing; there is no connection between the print sources stating she received a medal and the image sources (when three different medals are involved), so that photo should have been rejected on sourcing and SYNTH alone.  The other possible improvement (and I haven't thought this through completely) is something akin to what happens at FAC, where the rules state that an article cannot be at PR, GA, and FAC at the same time.  This article was everywhere all at once, and although TomStar81 brought the issue to Adam Cuerdan's talk a week ahead of main page, no one caught up with that.  Something was moving too fast-- which piece to slow down and how to fix that is the question.  I am not the best person to propose a solution, as I try to avoid both DYK (until something on the main page forces me to look) and GA for these very problems.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  20:16, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, (for context, others might not be aware that you and I just finished working through an eons-long review of a Japan, MilHist, internment camp-related article, so I knew you'd have a head start on this).  The main issues have been worked through, but  is now also raising concerns about whether this image is her medal or one of her husband's (if I am understanding him correctly), so yes ... the idea is to get this article to the best it can be, and to also track down the "four women" statement (which I find very surprising). Thanks for your help, and as always, there is no rush, as I know getting hold of books and sources during COVID is challenging. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Indeed. The issue here is that the image source gives the year as "19--", NOT 1946, which opens up the possibility that this may not actually be her presidential award, but one of the two awards her husband posthumously received in 1947 for which she accepted on his behalf. On a preliminary look it appears that the medal is correctly ID'd as the presidental medal of freedom (or whatever it was called in 1946), it fits the basic shape, but with everything else thats been incorrectly id'd in the image i'd feel better getting confirmation about where and when this was taken and whose doing the awarding. TomStar81 (Talk) 19:42, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The upside is we may all end up with a better understanding of what women did receive what medals during/after World War II. I find it astounding if was only four.  Thanks all for the help, Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:50, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Another possible source of information may be . She is the Wikipedian in Residence there, and has access to a lot of records. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 23:30, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I could pick up the biography of her next time I'm in the library (which is irregularly)--would that be helpful? I'm e-mailing our 20th-century curator, who has a special interest in members of the LDS Church in war. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:10, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Any help you can offer is welcome. ··· 日本穣 ·  投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 21:22, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * most appreciated! There is a longer discussion at WT:MILHIST of everything that needs to be sorted, so you can get the full flavor of the confusion.  (My hope that we will get a better handle on women awarded these medals has been dashed by that discussion!) Were the authors of her bio related to her?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  21:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like this discussion is continuing over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:51, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
 * most appreciated! There is a longer discussion at WT:MILHIST of everything that needs to be sorted, so you can get the full flavor of the confusion.  (My hope that we will get a better handle on women awarded these medals has been dashed by that discussion!) Were the authors of her bio related to her?  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  21:55, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like this discussion is continuing over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:51, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

self-published biography
Hello fellow editors, I have the biography of Beulah Ream Allen by Lucinda Bateman and Helen Ream Bateman, her niece and grand-niece. It contains transcriptions of letters and oral histories as well as summaries of information from said sources. I know that WP:ABOUTSELF usually pertains to a subject's blog or Twitter, but I think it can also apply to this kind of family-sourced information as well. Would other editors be okay with me adding information from the biography to the page? There are instances where the information would involve third parties, such as information about her relationship with her second husband, the other doctor in the POW camp, and her professional collaborations. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:58, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I did not use the biography, other than to note that it was written because it IMO does not meet the requirement of being published by an expert who has published elsewhere in curated publications, per WP:SELFPUB. I could find no evidence that either of the authors had any other publications. It is cited in the article with a link to access only to confirm that it was written. SusunW (talk) 16:19, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
 * fair enough. I think it's worth trying to track down another source for her joint mind-body practice with Dr. Stillwell (a psychologist). They practiced together in Palo Alto starting in 1948 and also established a joint household. According to the biography, despite their professional success, Stillwell had kind of a toxic personality and other family members avoided her as much as possible. They dissolved their partnership in 1957. I can access newspapers.com, but only from my office, so I'll run a few searches next time I'm in to see if I can find anything. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * , it was hoped that the book would reveal something about exactly where or on what date she received her medal, to help identify the man in the picture. The folks over at MILHIST would know which direction to go if the book provides any more detail. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:38, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately it didn't go into that much detail about it ("Beulah was later awarded the Medal of Freedom for her heroic surgical rescue of the wounded soldiers in Baguio during the first three weeks of the war. The highest medal awarded to civilians, it had been bestowed on only three other women. 'I didn't think much about it until the boys on the moon got it too,' she said, when asked about it years later.") I posted the information I thought was relevant over at the discussion on the project page. I'm also interested in using the book as a lead to find information that might be present in more reliable ways somewhere. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Rachel; after a few days being sick and feverish, I apologize for losing track of who’s on first ... and where first is! Sandy Georgia (Talk)  18:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I scraped everything I could find from newspapers.com and newspaperarchive.com. But, 2nd eyes are not a bad thing and you being in the US will have access to more sources. (Be aware there is another Dr. Beulah Allen, a Navajo woman, who was practicing as well.) FYI, the first person (who was a woman, incidentally) to receive the MOF was pinned with it in December 1945. We are talking about a time line of 6 months as Allen received hers in June, so there is a small window for who might have been awarded it prior to Allen. Good luck in your search for sources. SusunW (talk) 19:18, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

another photo
I found another photo of Allen in a BYU Banyan (here). It's from a similar time period to the other Banyan photo, so I don't know if it would be useful to add to the page. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Featured picture scheduled for POTD
Hello! This is to let editors know that File:Beulah Ream Allen receiving the Medal of Freedom (1945).jpg, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for December 16, 2022. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2022-12-16. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 15:27, 20 November 2022 (UTC)