Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SS Kiche Maru

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was No consensus. Black Kite 20:45, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] SS Kiche Maru

SS Kiche Maru (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

No evidence that a ship with the name SS Kiche Maru existed or sank Fg2 (talk) 10:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

  • The above links are noted on the talkpage, but are also extremely isolated, mostly non-reliable and no reason to suppose they haven't been taken in by a hoax. However, this appears to not be a hoax; the problem is one of transliteration. See this article from the New York Times in 1918, which refers to the ship in question as the Kicker Maru. The date is, as speculated, actually Sep 28, not 22. Relata refero (talk) 13:28, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Rather than delete the article, would it be an idea to change the date in the article (22nd) to the date that the reference included in the article says (28th) or include both dates (with a reference for the 22nd and words to the effect that there are two dates given by sources)? If there are sources for alternative names that could be included too (or the article renamed if there is a source for the correct name). If there are sources saying it's a hoax they could also be included. All this would make for a better article which, in my opinion, would be better than a deleted article. Ha! (talk) 13:50, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • The September 28 date is in some books, September 22 in others, but the first report in newspapers (at least as found on newspaperarchive.com) is a Thursday, September 26, 1912 article that refers to the disaster as having happened the previous Sunday (September 22). The contemporary source was two days before 9/28. Mandsford (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep This does appear to be the subject of secondary independent sources, the core criterion of WP:N. Print sources are valid (remember books?). There does seem to be question of the English language spelling. That's not a deletion issue. --Oakshade (talk) 15:48, 29 March 2008 (UTC) Neutral - I just don't know at this point and don't want to go down in history advocating keeping something that might be proven to be a historic hoax. If there's something more substantial showing this information is true, I'll change to keep. --Oakshade (talk) 06:17, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Hoax wouldn't be my first guess; rather I suspect it's a long-running mistake. It's easy to imagine a scenario such as this: 1000 was the death toll for the typhoon, nationwide, and someone in the chain—a reporter, wireless operator, or editor—mistook it for the death toll of one ship, with the Titanic disaster being so recent. Fg2 (talk) 08:03, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep I started the article, although someone else appears to have added comments about the Kobayashi Maru on Star Trek, something I've never heard of ("maru" is a Japanese word for ship). It was a real disaster in 1912, and you can read about it in any almanac. Look in the index under "disasters". Not sure where the nominator came up with the "no evidence that it ever existed" conclusion.... Mandsford (talk) 18:03, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep, this is an old trivia question. Obviously we need to document the different (correct or not) transliterations. The Kobayashi Maru claim is seriously suspect as there are only superficial comparisons. --Dhartung | Talk 22:10, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm getting closer to something here. Japan's official natural disasters list counts a September, 1912 wind storm as the 24th worst disaster in modern history for that country with 1000 dead. We have NewspaperArchive showing one or two wire stories (hard to tell) for ~9/28/1912 as reporting 1000 dead from the loss of a K-(mumble) Maru. I'm betting the reporting of 1000 dead matches the storm deaths overall, with the loss of the K-(mumble) Maru a humble trawler of some kind (two naval vessels were wrecked in the same storm, though), confused as a passenger ship, perhaps breathlessly echoing the Titanic earlier that year. --Dhartung | Talk 23:08, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Keep. Subject is discussed in multiple secondary sources, both in print and on teh interwebz. Celarnor Talk to me 00:10, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Yeah, and that's starting to bug me. Looks more and more like a game of telephone. --Dhartung | Talk 04:56, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Those of you who don't read Japanese might have missed a comment by Oda Mari on Talk:SS Kiche Maru. She wrote, "... looking at the list there's no ship similar to the name Kiche." The words "the list" link to a page at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of the Government of Japan. Here is the link. The page lists maritime disasters. The only entry for 1912, apart from the sinking of the Titanic, is the sinking of the Umegaka on September 22. For comparison, the entry for October 11, 1910 is for an event in which 41 people died. I'm unable to figure out why they would omit the Kiche-maru, in which more than a thousand died, while listing another in which 41 perished. Another page at the MLIT site, here, is about Japan's important maritime disasters. It has only one entry for the year Taisho 1 (which was 1912, following the death of Emperor Meiji). That was the sinking of the Umegaka on September 22, 1912. Like Mari, I just don't see any references to any ship with a name remotely resembling "Kiche" sinking in that month. There was a typhoon then (see this report from the JMA). Can anyone find further information? Fg2 (talk) 12:08, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comments (1) "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth" is the first line of the Wikipedia:Verifiability policy. It doesn't matter if the statement "The Kiche Maru was a Japanese steamship that sank" is true or not. What matters is that there is a reliable source that makes that statement. (2) The evidence so far for the alternate point of view ""There was no Japanese steamship called Kiche Maru, that sank" is original research. It might be completely true (in the realist sense of the word) but if there isn't a reliable source for the statement or fact, it's original research. If a reliable source can be found that puts forward that view then it's no longer original research. (3) The statement "No evidence that a ship with the name SS Kiche Maru existed or sank" is demonstratably not true. There definitely is a question over whether there is any credible/reliable evidence though. (4) I think it comes down to this. Is the source provided (linked to at Google Books above) a reliable source or not and is it sufficient (assuming no more can be found). Note that the article can be written to reflect all the relevant aspects, including that there is no evidence of it in the usual official maritime sources, that it's an often(?) used trivia question, and the confusion over it's name and date. Whether that can be done without making it too vague to be in an encyclopedia or not is a different story Ha! (talk) 02:28, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Well, any rule that "forces" us to include information just because it's in the World Almanac when we know it's wrong (which is what I think now) is a bad rule. I am very surprised that in 96 years there has been no Japanese notice that Western reference books include a bogus shipwreck (or in other words, I suspect there must have been, but it is buried somewhere and only in Japanese). My gut is telling me that the best outcome here would be if we had an article on the 1912 storm (which doesn't seem to be regarded as a typhoon), which a mention in there that this story got into the Western press. Otherwise I'm reluctant to have an article about something that we know doesn't exist if we can't put it into proper context. This is similar to the Schooner Jenny problem; see also phantom island, fictitious entry. --Dhartung | Talk 06:25, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia is based on verifiability, not truth. There are reasons for this, and one of them is that some guy who did some research for five days does not get to decide 'truth'. All we do is catalogue information that is available to us; the information that we have via the World Almanac, correct or incorrect, is verifiable, and thus should be included. Until you publish a paper regarding this, you are in no position to decide 'truth'. If anything, this is a 'we should have a 'maybe this doesn't really exist' section', although I'm sure it would quickly get tagged for the WP:OR that it would have to be. If you've done anything at all, you've merely furthered the verifiability and notifiability of the material by being able to do such research on it. Celarnor Talk to me 12:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
  • Merge to an article about the typhoon in question (give me a title and a few days and I'll start one). The article as it stands is already guilty of WP:OR; the claim that Kiche Maru = Kieko Maru = Kioko Maru = Kicker Maru rests on Wikipedians' assumption that all mentions of "steamships with one thousand passengers sinking" on that date are about the same vessel. But if you insist on accepting that there's one steamship "Kiche Maru" which sank on that date and that steamship carried 1,000 passengers (despite extremely flimsy evidence), you don't really have any grounds to deny there are two or three or four such steamships with really similar names, especially since it is well-verified that the extreme weather conditions on that date sank multiple ships.
So that would leave us with four entries about steamships which sank on that date. However, I don't see that any of those alleged steamships have "non-trivial coverage in multiple sources" required by WP:N for us to have an independent article on the topic. The "Kiche Maru" gets forty-one words in print (other Google hits which refer to this alleged ship are forums, "this day in history" pages, Wikipedia mirrors, and similar sites which fall outside the bounds of WP:RS). The others get even less than that --- as little as one sentence fragment. cab (talk) 06:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Delete. I agree with Fg2's comment that it's a long-running mistake. First of all, “Kiche” does not sound like Japanese. I'd like to ask those who want to keep the article. Please show me the kanji of the ship's name. As far as I searched maritime disasters in Japan, there was no Kiche maru and its accident. Why there is no Japanese source? Oda Mari (talk) 13:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Weak keep, as per the comments I've already made (enough sources for notability, verifiability not truth, article can be expanded to address concerns) Ha! (talk) 12:44, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I added and linked some references [1].Ha! (talk) 00:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
There's another (not useful but slightly interesting) source here [2] (3rd one down titled Bird Lore) that leads to a Google Books snippet that mentions the "The schooner Kioko Maru, which left the plume hunters upon Lee Hermes Island,about eighty miles southeast of Midway Island, was never heard of after her..". It's no use for the article as that's all there is in the snippet and when you try to read the snippet, the excerpt Google have scanned doesn't actually say what the search says it says (if that makes sense) but I thought I'd mention it as it describes the Kioko Maru as a scooner. Ha! (talk) 08:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment I would dearly love to see a Japanese source, although I can't read Japanese. The jp.wikipedia doesn't have an article, but it's relatively small compared to en.wikipedia. That the disaster is listed in reference sources is undeniable, and there are contemporary news reports to show that it was reported at the time. I started the article because, let's face it, we Americans have a tendency to dismiss even 1,000 deaths as trivial if they didn't happen in an English-speaking country. You've heard of the Marshall University crash in November 1970, perhaps even shed a tear while watching We Are Marshall. But chances are that you have no idea that several hundred thousand people were killed in a cyclone in Bangladesh the same month-- nor do you really care, because it was in Bangladesh, and nobody you know got hurt. I've set out as much information as I can find in other sources about the disaster (I'll have to say, the "original research" guy really galls me... you're a jerk). I can't discount the possibility that the almanacs and lists of disasters have been the victim of a hoax (the Black Hole of Calcutta is a perfect example), although the scamming of authoritative reference works would, in itself, be notable. Mandsford (talk) 17:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
    • The fact that no WP:RS have bothered to clear up the name confusion in the first place perfectly demonstrates why we have a WP:N policy requiring "non-trivial coverage" in the first place. Notability is not an arbitrary threshold to be overcome by throwing WP:BIGNUMBERs at it ("look how many people supposedly died!"); it's a standard that ensures a minimum amount of information is available about a topic, and that, since someone bothered to write non-trivially about a topic, they might have had their work fact-checked (whereas throwaway assertions in works which do not focus on the subject of an article often contain many errors). It's quite clear that no sources have looked particularly deeply into this alleged ship, which leaves us writing information based on a 41-word entry in some book, plus sentence fragments in the New York Times which can't even agree how this ship is called and come up with names which are clearly ridiculous ("Kicker" Maru? you've gotta be kidding me). cab (talk) 18:12, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
      • If this never happened (and it's looking that way), then I'm surprised that the misinformation went on for more than 90 years. It would come as a surprise to all those publishers of almanacs over the decades as well. However, if Japanese sources indicate that the American sources are incorrect, then I'm glad to see that coming to light. As cab points out, the almanacs, and even the books about maritime disasters have never looked particularly deeply into the details. I did find the 1912 newspaper article, and the report of a typhoon was the first explanation that I ever saw for how a Titanic like disaster would have happened. I appreciate the people who have been able to search Japanese sources, which confirm that this isn't mentioned in Japanese history, the American sources notwithstanding. What's the proper way to treat a debunked story? One way would be to delete the article entirely (note to administrator-- WP:HOAX applies to bad-faith creations, not to misinformation that has been repeated for decades). However, since the veracity of the story is now doubtful, I think it would be better to leave the entry and add disclaimers. Otherwise, the same mistakes will be made a couple of years from now. Mandsford (talk) 21:57, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
  • KEEP. Those who think this is a hoax are idiots. It's been included in the Information Please Almanac annually for decades. It should've been in Wikipedia a long time ago. Hard to believe for some that a shipwreck with such a high loss of life could follow the Titanic six months later. But it did happen. The Titanic is not the only shipwreck in history. Let's not forget shipwrecks were common in those days. The Kichemaru was not a brand new ship with rich people on it and probably because it happened on the far side of the world it wasn't reported as much. In 1907 the S.S. Dakota was lost in Yokohama Bay. At the time it was the largest liner built in the United States. Hardly is it ever recalled except in the best of books on maritime history. So rather than deleting this article, concentrate on expanding this for instance with a photograph of the ship. KoplimekKoplimek (talk) 18:13, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Koplimek, any additional sources that you have will be greatly appreciated, particularly if you know of a source for a photograph of the Kiche Maru. I think the use of the word "hoax" is unfortunate, since it implies something intentionally misleading. What we've seen so far is that (a) Nobody has found a Japanese source that recounts the sinking of a ship with more than 1,000 persons aboard; (b) Nobody has found a Japanese source that refers to a ship called Kiche Maru or anything similar, even accounting for variations in transliteration; (c) There are numerous contemporary American newspaper reports of a typhoon that struck Japan on September 22, 1912, with a heavy loss of life, whether on ships or on land. Because of the lack of Japanese sources to back up the American sources, I conclude that this may have been a case of inaccurate reporting, which was not uncommon in the days where news from overseas was sent by telegraph. Mandsford (talk) 23:33, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
      • cab I apologize if you're offended. Mandsford I'd love to find a photo of this ship. Mind it's wasn't the biggest ship in the world or the newest at that time. There was a maritime site earlier in this decade that listed the Kichemaru shipwreck. A very legit merchant site that's sadly not up anymore. For whatever reason the Japanese wanted this disaster suppressed I would think. 1000 people dying is a huge loss no matter what the country. But just like I said before the S.S. Dakota(biggest American built liner in 1907) was lost in Japan in Yokohama and at one time you couldn't find a thing on this ship on the net. I love the internet but it's not bonafide. Believe it or not there's information that's not on the net such as "passenger lists of victims of airline disasters." Somewhere there'll surface a photo of this ship. I'll keep looking I know that. All my best guys. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Koplimek (talk • contribs) 02:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


  • Keep per nine citations in five sentences. –thedemonhog talk • edits 16:25, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.