Talk:Sergeant Siwash

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. You can locate your hook here. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by MisawaSakura talk 17:16, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

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Sergeant Siwash at the Battle of Tarawa, 1943

• ... that a duck named Sergeant Siwash (pictured) fought the Japanese in World War II?

• Source: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2022/11/23/the-marine-who-was-a-duck-yes-an-actual-duck/

• • ALT1: ... that a duck named Siwash (pictured) was a U.S. Marine Corps sergeant in World War II? Source: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2022/11/23/the-marine-who-was-a-duck-yes-an-actual-duck/
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Friday the 13th (1980 film)

Created by Mikeycdiamond (talk) and ArtemisiaGentileschiFan (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 34 past nominations.

ArtemisiaGentileschiFan (talk) 14:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC).

• This article passes all the compliance policies, looks like; being created on 10 October and expanded out to over 5,000 bytes. I favor main hook personally. Good job on writing this neat article about a WWII veteran! BarntToust 00:47, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

To Prep 4 quirky slot

Name

How did the Marines come up with the name Siwash? Perhaps a play "Sea Wash"? MisawaSakura (talk) 21:50, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

It says it in one of the sources. Siwash got the nickname from the nickname used for Jack Cornelius, and "Cornelius acquired the nickname due to it sounding similar to his home county’s name." Mikeycdiamond (talk) 00:26, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

A joke article

Sorry to be pointing out the obvious, but the narrative is a joke. The duck clearly couldn't be treated as a real sergeant in military operations (and most likely did not pass the real procedure to become one) and even assuming that she did attack some Japanese birds, these birds were not fighting on the side of Japanese Imperial Army and were no threat to the US army. Even if marines were telling this joke and Time magazine published the joke without explicitly pointing out that this is what it is, Wikipedians should use their own common sense. Time Magazine is free to joke - it's probably the obvious jocular nature of the claims that makes that acceptable - but Wikipedia shouldn't maintain articles with false claims. The project finds it hard enough to be trusted and trustworthy even without demonstratively making false claims for fun. 62.73.72.101 (talk) 20:02, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Even if it's obvious that she was treated like a real marine as a joke, she still received a genuine citation for bravery and was commended for participating in battles. Both can be true. ArtemisiaGentileschiFan (talk) 20:09, 29 October 2025 (UTC)