Talk:USS Panay incident

Untitled
Please add comments ot the bottom of this page.

A very large block of text is a copy directly from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/summer_2001_two_japans_1.html. According to the copyright notice on that page, free use is not confirmed. I have pulled all the copied text (which is unfortunate because it was really good). If someone can confirm that we are allowed to use the text as is, please source your confirmation of copyright on this page and add the text back to the article. Rossami 23:16, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * See Copyright if you dont fully understand why it is ok to copy text directly from http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/summer_2001_two_japans_1.html . Perl 23:45, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Not only have I read the Wikipedia article on copyrights, I have also read the relevant US law. I refer you specifically to the copyright clauses on the National Archives website including Add to those disclaimers the facts that With all that, I do not believe that Wikipedia automatically falls under the fair use clause. If you are qualified to give a legal opinion based on the available evidence, please do so. Otherwise, I ask again for affirmative evidence that the cut text did not constitute a copyright violation. Rossami 04:36, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * "Generally, materials produced by Federal agencies are in the public domain and may be reproduced without permission. However, not all materials appearing on this website are in the public domain. Some materials have been donated or obtained from individuals or organizations and may be subject to restrictions on use." (emphasis added)
 * "we can not confirm copyright status for any item."
 * "Please note that because we cannot guaranty the status of specific items, you use materials found in our holdings at your own risk." and
 * "We request that you link to our site rather than downloading portions of it...".
 * the NARA article is specifically attributed to an individual (Trevor K Plante)
 * the Wikipedia article was virtually 100% cut and paste from their article (even down to the footnote numbers, though the footnotes themselves were not brought over).


 * Note that the "we can not confirm copyright status for any item." statement (and the others like it) applies to the numerous items contained within the National Archives. I'm pretty sure they'd be willing to confirm the copyright status of their own publication. -- Cyrius 05:46, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * US Government material is copyright free unless they indicate otherwise. Perl 19:20, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * The question is, does that material belong to the US government, or does it belong to Mr. Plante. While I believe it is public domain (given that Mr. Plante is a NARA employee, and it is a NARA publication), the online version of Prologue does not contain any information to clear up who has the rights to what. It won't hurt anything for you to ask them. -- Cyrius 21:50, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * If Mr. Plante is an employee of the US government, then it IS public domain. Perl 21:59, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * If you mean that statement to be an absolute rule, it is not true. Read the law. It is true only of materials created in his official capacity as an employee. He retains personal rights to anything he creates in his free time even if he later donates it (which he could do with restrictions) to his employer. While I agree with you that the source is probably in the public domain, the only way to know for sure is to ask NARA. I have not been able to get through (and have not had much time to try). Have you? Rossami 16:54, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * By the way, the law also says that they do not have to mark the copyrighted material as copyrighted anymore. The responsibility of confirming fair use is now on the user. Rossami

Public domain
I got tired of the useless assertations, so I took an entirely radical and unthinkable step to solve the problem. I asked them.


 * Features written by NARA staff are in the public domain. Prologue does not hold any copyright, but individual authors may choose to copyright. Trevor Plante is a NARA archivist, and therefore his article is in the public domain. Copyrighted articles are indicated by the (c) symbol after the author's name.


 * Even though there is no copyright, we are interested to know where Prologue features are reprinted and ask that, as a courtesy, Prologue is given as the source.


 * Thank you for inquiring.


 * Mary C. Ryan
 * Policy & Communications Staff - NPOL

NPOL being the policy branch of NARA. There's an email address and a phone number attached, but I'm not putting them up unless requested to do so.

There, was that really so hard? -- Cyrius 20:10, 10 Mar 2004 (UTC)

WPMILHIST Assessment
Wow. An excellent start, and an interesting read. I think it would be pertinent, however, to expand upon the significance of the event in the introduction. This was the first Japanese attack on any US target during the prelude to WW II, right? Obviously, it didn't garner a lot of direct response, nothing like the response that Pearl Harbor, the Maine, or the Lusitania did, but I think it's a much more significant event than simply one of many attacks. Also, please cite your sources in a dedicated References or Sources section. LordAmeth 15:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Deliberate Attack, but why?
The is not alone in telling that the Panay was deliberately bobmed by the Japanese. But could anyone explain to me the why? Why were the Japanese officers deliberately attaking a ship of the neutral USA? thestor 12:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

too much blah blah re donations
There is lots of extended blah-blah about people who offered or donated trivial amounts of money in regret for the Panay bombing. This is a bunch of triviality and non-encyclopedic in nature and does not belong here. I have erased some of it now, and I am tempted to erase all of it. What is important (and encyclopedic) information is the large amount of money paid to the U.S. by the Japanese government. It is hard to believe why someone would want to write all the stuff about triviality by private individuals. Someone needs to learn about how scales of importance apply to events - and not to babble about things. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.249.90.237 (talk) 15:37, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

It sounds like some weird nationalist revisionism to me. I’d say edit it out. Came to the discussion page for this. Freakdog (talk) 04:26, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

Post incident
The post incident section seems to take up about three-quarters of the article, but focuses largely on the responses of some (by no means all) Japanese citizens. It's also largely taken from one source. I suggest it gives the matter undue weigth in an article on this subject; it should be substantially trimmed, and the original article linked for further reading. The subject of Japanese dislike of the militaristic stance their country had is a worthwhile subject, but such an in-depth treatment of a single aspect of it is out of place here. Xyl 54 (talk) 00:39, 4 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, something needs to be said about the donations, since it seems to have been a diplomatically important aspect of the event. I've read the National Archives article on the subject before, and it's clear that Ambassador Grew and the State Department were quite troubled on how to handle the affair. While the original blanket copy-and-paste was obviously excessive, the way it has been clumsily chopped out leaves the current article with a nonsensical break in this section. It needs to be rewritten with a summary of what happened. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 23:21, 7 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Another problem with this section is that it starts by talking about the contributions, but never gets around to explaining what contributions it's talking about, or why they were a problem. This could easily be solved by adding one sentence to the beginning of the paragraph explaining that they were (I presume) voluntary donations by Japanese citizens who wanted to show their regret for the incident.  Alas, I know nothing about them as I'd never heard of them before.  Maybe somebody with more information can tidy this slight issue up.  JDZeff (talk) 01:30, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like whitewashing and it’s out of place. “A bunch of concerned citizens gave $$ because of the following reasons A B and C “— and then move on. Freakdog (talk) 04:29, 30 April 2019 (UTC)

"Incident" involving other aircraft?
hi, my purnell's The Illustrated encyclopedia of 20th Century Weapons & Warfare under "D1A, Aichi" (p. 674) states "Most saw action in China, one unit dive-bombing and sinking the USS gunboat Panay in the Yangtze in 1937." just wondering why the article doesn't mention these aircraft (also no mention of this in the aircraft's wikiarticle). thanks, Coolabahapple (talk) 13:27, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Lt. Arthur Anders
For some reason this article completely omits mention of Lt. Arthur Anders, the so-called "Hero of the Panay" who was awarded the Navy Cross as a result of his actions during the incident. Anders' son is the Apollo astronaut William Anders. It's a glaring omission.