Comments by "Evan" (@MrEvanfriend) on "How a lone Japanese Bomber pilot and defecting American citizen tried to INVADE Hawaii" video.

Probably. Three traitors had to ruin it for thousands. The two survivors should've been hanged.
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@tuxedosteve1904 They were American citizens. If not, they should have been put against a wall and shot as spies.
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@tuxedosteve1904 But these people were Americans. And what they did was treason. According to the US Constitution, Article III, Section 3, treason against the United States shall consist only of levying war against them, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. These three (1) levied war against the United States, and (2) gave an enemy aid and comfort. There isn't any gray area here.
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@tuxedosteve1904 Uh, no. I'm not "salty". And that also isn't what salty means, but hey, you keep on with that. The fact remains that regardless of whatever distinctions you want to make, these three were Americans. They committed overt acts of treason against the United States. This isn't arguable. Their ethnicity is irrelevant to the act of treason.
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@tuxedosteve1904 It is treason, regardless of how he "saw himself". How you "see yourself" has absolutely zero legal significance. If you are an American citizen and you (1) levy war against the United States, or (2) adhere to American enemies, giving them aid and comfort, you are guilty of treason. The Constitution requires witnesses to an overt act of treason, and there were plenty of those. It doesn't matter what your silly theories on ethnicity are. If a defense attorney at a trial for treason said "he 'saw himself' as Japanese, so it doesn't count", all he'd accomplish would be to lay the grounds for an appeal over ineffective counsel. Feelings do not matter under the law. Or, really, at all.
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@tuxedosteve1904 Yeah...not to most Americans.
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@tuxedosteve1904 No, but the Constitution ignores his ethnicity. And you become a citizen one of two ways - you are either born a citizen, or you are naturalized. A born citizen ought to have more connection to their home than to some place where people with similar names come from. A naturalized citizen swears an oath. Your ethnicity doesn't matter. How many Meyers and d'Amatos fought against the Germans and Italians, respectively?
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31 months in prison? She got off with a slap on the wrist. What she did was actual treason, and she should've been hanged for it.
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@michaelscott8567 100% of a sample of three individuals. On a remote Hawaiian island. You can't honestly say that three people on a remote Hawaiian island are representative of the Japanese American population as a whole. Also, you're discounting any other people with Japanese names. How did the rest of the Japanese population of Hawaii react? You don't put an entire ethnic group in concentration camps because of the actions of three people. And we kept them there, even when thousands of the young men volunteered for the US Army in spite of our treatment of them, and served with distinction in Europe. The whole thing was a disgrace.
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@michaelscott8567 Internment was not all all necessary, it was a gross overreaction to a largely imaginary threat. And they very literally were put in concentration camps. It is true that the concentration camps they were put in were not nearly as bad as the ones that the Nazis and the Soviets had, but they were still placed in camps under armed guard and denied their basic freedoms, and for no good reason whatsoever. We were absolutely right to wage total war against Japan, to dismantle their empire and bomb them to the stone age. We were dead wrong to intern Americans because they shared an ethnic background with our enemies.
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@michaelscott8567 It was deeply unnecessary, as demonstrated by the mass enlistment of the men of appropriate age in the camps, which were not "comfy" by any sane standard. It was a disgraceful and utterly uncalled for act based on a largely imaginary threat. You don't strip tens of thousands of people of their rights because of the acts of three, especially when those three are by no means representative of the larger population. Similarly bad acts by other countries don't justify it either. There's really no justification. It was unnecessary, and it was wrong. This has nothing to do with feelings. It has to do with rights. The Fifth Amendment states that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. This was a blatant violation of that. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law for everyone, regardless of ethnicity. This was a blatant violation of that. It was inexcusable, and based on irrational fear. You can't suspend people's basic rights because you're afraid - even if the fear is rational, which it wasn't.
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@davidbrogan606 You mean "a few individuals weren't". You can't judge an entire ethnic group on the actions of three people.
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Ricardo VS Calling people RACIST makes you stupid.
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@michaelscott8567 A sample size of three, in a population that was clearly not representative of the whole for any number of reasons.
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@wjphillip It still means the same thing. It isn't the same as the extermination camps, or even the other German camps that weren't extermination camps, but they were concentration camps nonetheless, by any reasonable definition of "concentration camp". They were filled with people put there by force without due process of law for ethnic/political reasons. What else would you call that? The conditions don't have to reach Dachau or Bergen-Belsen levels to be considered a concentration camp. Whatever you want to call Manzanar et al, it was absolutely inexcusable, and an extreme violation of Constitutional rights, and done for no good reason. Every detainee had his Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights (at the very least) wholly trampled upon by the Roosevelt administration, which had already coerced the courts into acting as a rubber stamp for whatever flagrant violations of the Constitution Roosevelt decided on. The whole thing is entirely shameful.
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@intreuefestundlachen1883 Against a country founded by throwing off an oppressive foreign king, I'd say.
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@intreuefestundlachen1883 Unlike in France, there were no persecutions of former loyalists in the US. After the Revolution, many of them set sail for England because they either feared persecution or didn't want to have anything to do with the new United States, but there wasn't any mass persecution. As for how he was oppressive? I'll let Thomas Jefferson answer that: Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. "He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. "He has dissolvedRepresentative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people. "He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. "He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. "He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: "For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: "For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: "For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury: "For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: "For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: "For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: "For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. "He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging Waragainst us. "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. "He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. "He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. "In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people"
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They hadn't, because there weren't any at that point.
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@wjphillip They weren't nearly as bad as Nazi Germany's concentration camps. But they were still concentration camps. It's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They were rounded up for no reason and forced into camps without anything resembling due process. They were barred from leaving the camp, and had armed guards keeping watch. I don't know what else you'd call it.
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"One of the few wrong decisions". Yeah, Roosevelt was easily our worst president ever, with Woodrow Wilson being the only one to come even close. Besides the internment of the Japanese Americans, his worst offense, he prolonged the depression, threatened the courts into submission, abandoned any pretense of Constitutional principles like limited government and checks and balances, refused to step down after two terms (it's a good thing he died when he did. It's highly doubtful that he would have stepped down voluntarily), behaved in a sycophantic and overly conciliatory manner towards Stalin - abandoning Eastern Europe to 45 years of slavery.... Roosevelt made two good decisions in his presidency. He (1) signed the repeal of Prohibition, though by that time it was a bipartisan consensus, and anyone in office would have done the same, and (2) let Churchill, a man of infinitely superior intellect and character, set wartime strategic goals. Roosevelt gets a lot of undeserved credit for being president during a time of crisis. He exacerbated one crisis (the depression) while using it as an excuse to ignore the Constitution, and handled the other (the war) well by not meddling, for the most part, though his attitude towards Stalin was naive and foolish. He should've listened to Churchill on that as well.
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@Franky46Boy He was good at messaging - the same reason that every president from Adams to Trump got elected. He said the right things to the right people, didn't make any overt errors on campaign, and told the right story - it didn't matter that the truth was that providing government sinecures for people wasn't helping, it was seen to be doing something, and that was enough. Politics has very little to do with the truth of the matter - awful presidents have been elected to second terms any number of times, from Grant to Obama. It's all about how you sell yourself, and who you're up against. Roosevelt was a terrible president, and not a good person, but he was an excellent politician, and that's what really matters in a reelection effort.
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@Robbini0 Three out of tens of thousands is never a good sample.
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@whoareyou1034 This doesn't justify it. We've had traitors throughout our history of a number of different ethnicities. Would it have been acceptable to intern all of the Jews after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested? Robert Hansen is probably of Scandinavian extraction based on his name, should all the Nordics be locked away because he sold our secrets to the Soviets for years? It was worse than unconstitutional. It was the worst act in the history of the United States. The internment of American citizens for no reason besides their surnames.
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@bryantamon8633 Well, we only have one Constitution, and it's the highest law in the land, so no, not at all.
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@bryantamon8633 Nobody has ever been able to "be above it". We have had bad judges stretch the meaning to absurd levels (see Wickard v. Filburn), but lately, the courts are starting to trend towards reining those in.
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It was absolutely a gross overreaction, and the blackest mark in our history. To punish tens of thousands because of the traitorous actions of three people is inexcusable. It would be like putting all the Jews in camps because the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets nuclear technology. Three people were guilty. One died, two got off lightly - death sentences would have been appropriate. The fact that so many men enlisted straight from the camps, and fought with distinction in Europe, proves that the mass internment was grossly unreasonable and utterly inexcusable.
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@superfly8158 So the atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army excuse bad acts by the Roosevelt administration that were entirely unrelated? Tell me how that works. That's the difference between the US and Imperial Japan. It's why our war against them was just and righteous, and why their defeat was a moral necessity. So, what possible excuse could there be to do anything anywhere even a fraction as bad as what they did?
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@JoshuaAmaro An Indian reservation isn't an internment camp, though I understand the analogy.
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@JoshuaAmaro Indians are allowed to leave reservations, I had a couple friends in the Corps who grew up on reservations.
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@daleeasternbrat816 Yeah, I know.
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"Every one" was a sample size of three on a remote island. Not exactly representative of the population as a whole.
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@davidbrogan606 I agree that there's a problem with people not assimilating, and the three people who did this should have been put up against a wall and shot for treason. That being said, what three people did and the attitudes of an entire ethnic group in the US, most of whom were loyal citizens, are two very different things. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the people responsible for giving nuclear weapons technology to the Soviets, were Jewish. Should all Jews have been put in camps because of the actions of them and a couple of co-conspirators who were also Jewish? There was an American of German descent who helped eight German spies who landed by U-boat. He was executed along with the spies, as was deserved. Should every Schmidt and Muller in the US have been interned? You're talking about trampling the vital constitutional rights of tens of thousands of people because of the bad acts of an insignificant number of individuals. You can't make a good excuse for that.
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Michael Moretti I'm fully aware that this was before the Constitution implied term limits, but the two and done was a longstanding tradition dating back to George Washington, and broken by no other president. The fact that FDR was willing to do so says a lot about him.
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@warpartyattheoutpost4987 It didn't happen, so it doesn't really matter. Who knows what would've happened if it had?
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@Robbini0 They almost certainly did. But three out of three on a remote Hawaiian island, who hadn't even heard of Pearl Harbor at the time, aren't a good sample.
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@Robbini0 Saying "the entire population of the region at the time" is misleading - when the entire population is three, that doesn't tell you much. It also doesn't say anything about the Japanese American population at large - how representative were these three of the population at large? Was there anything about them that made them stand out - an especially reasonable question as, as the only three on that particular island, they were already unique in at least that one aspect. They made their choice without any broader community - would they have made the same choice given influence from other Japanese Americans? It's too small a sample size in too unique a situation to be particularly useful in making any broad generalization. Also, it's taken alone, without any broader context. How did the rest of the Japanese population of Hawaii react to the bombing? There sure wasn't a lot of cheering and waving the Rising Sun, to be sure. It's taking an extremely isolated and rather bizarre incident and using that to judge an entire ethnic group. Would you judge all American Jews on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? You can't judge an entire ethnic group based on an isolated bad act by a small number of members of that group. There is no ideology that comes along with being named Nakamura or whatever. To assume that there is is bad reasoning. And I know it didn't happen until later, but at least a regiment worth of young men enlisted from those camps. Enlisted in the US Army, to fight for America despite the way we'd treated them. That's thousands of men, certainly a far better population sample than three, and from a broader cross section of the Japanese American population, too. Why not judge all Japanese Americans on these men? Also, it wasn't as if Japan was are only enemy. How many guys named Meyer and Schmidt and D'Amico and Rossi fought for the US, in every theater - including against other guys named Meyer and Schmidt and D'Amico and Rossi. Why weren't the Meyers and D'Amicos rounded up as well - it wouldn't have made any less sense.
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