Google maps are not the problem, the government is.
I don't think it's poor editing on the part of Google at all. Poor editing would be altering the historical record in order to assuage the feelings of one group who might be made uncomfortable. To run with your example, if you're going to alter the map why not go the whole way and replace 'negro' with 'happy black people live here'?
It's a sad but seemingly universal fact that when one social group oppresses another and later people ask 'why are the conditions of (oppressed group) so awful?', the self-serving response of oppressing group is 'they choose to live that way', ascribing their negative situation to some inherent defect on the part of the oppressed.
Unfortunately, this is exactly how Japanese society (and others) tend to "deal with" unpleasant history.
Here's an apropos anecdote: I have a Japanese friend who came to Australia to study. One day, her and her friends were in the city on Anzac day - a national holiday to commemorate war dead, basically. They were standing at a bus stop, talking, when some youths in a car threw some eggs at them. They were, of course, horrified, and had no idea why anyone would do that.
It was only some time later it was explained to her - while the egg-throwing was just stupid, it was probably because she was loudly speaking Japanese in the city, near the war memorial, on Anzac day, and Japan had attacked Australia numerous times, causing many of the dead the day is supposed to commemorate. Imagine my amazement when I realised she had absolutely no idea Japan had attacked Australia in WWII. Just never been mentioned. There were over 100 attacks, in (from memory) 5 places. These are, of course, famous in our culture - it's the only time the country has ever actually been attacked. She had no idea.
Un-fucking-believable. And btw, please don't take this as racist or anything else - I'm just stating facts, and I fear us whiteys do not hold much higher a moral ground - I doubt your average American college graduate, for example, is as well-informed as she perhaps ought to be about her Government's reprehensible actions in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century either.
This is not a censorship issue. This is about being sensitive to the outcome of your actions. Information wants to be free, sure, but some information is hurtful. And as a publisher you have a duty to at least take that into account.
Perhaps this means not adding documents with hurtful slurs in them to Google Maps (especially in a format that can easily be used to aid further discrimination). Or, perhaps a better solution is ADDING information and context to these maps. After all, the remedy to bad speech is more speech.
Obviously Google should have the right to post the maps and line them up with modern-day Japan with no further context, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Google not like a publisher. A publisher would be the one that ordered and funded the creation of this map.
Google is more like a library with a really fast full text indexed card catalog. They take the content from the publisher. "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"
Google just created a link to this data in Google Earth. You can add context to the data in Google Earth.
Otherwise - Yes, Mein Kampf is available to everyone who can use internet / library / ...
The things selected for inclusion on a Google Maps tab are an editorial choice. I'm suggesting they are analogous to a "recommended book list" -- a subset of all the available books that a librarian has chosen to highlight. Just as being listed in Google's index is analogous to being shelved in the library. (Surely, no one here is suggesting that anything be removed from Google's index.)
Clear now?
This is more than "cultural sensitivies", Burakumin suffer from outright racism, they cannot get jobs, they cannot marry outside their group. Any informational support for this injustice does not get my support.
This would be a much different situation if, say, Google was being asked to remove links to these maps from their index.