Who was sent to the US internment camps in World War 2 and why?

Answer 1

Approximately 100,000 US citizens of Japanese ancestry and also some Germans and US citizens of German origin, and a handful of Italians. It was feared that they might commit sabotage.

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Primarily because we were afraid that Japanese-Americans, most of whom were born in the US and were as patriotic as anyone else, would do something bad. It was, unfortunately, all too easy for Caucasian politicians to make the public FEAR an enemy who could be easily identified, and allow their basic human, not to say Constitutional rights, to be abrogated in the name of 'safety' or, 'homeland security'. Thousands of completely innocent Americans were taken from their homes, and locked in internment camps for the duration of the war - and their homes, businesses and other belongings were stolen by the government - not something to be proud of. Of course, it could never happen today... or ...?

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Japanese people living in America. The answer to this question is actually surprisingly complex. Internerned during the second world war were Japanese living along the West Coast or National Defense Zone but also German and Italians. Not many people are aware that the United States also convinced many Latin American countries to uproot people of Japanese heritage and send them to be interned in America. It was later discovered that the US Government had intended to use them as bargining chips towards Japan.

Unfortunately, many of these latin American countries did not want them to return and this indeed posed a challenging legal dilemma since they technically became people without official citizenship of any country. All told, the internment process uprooted about 120,000 Japanese Americans while only a fraction of the more than 600,000 Italian Americans were ever interned and the rights of the Japanese were not fully restored until 1946, while Italian and German Americans had their rights restored in mid 1943. One cannot appreciate history unless one accepts that during this particularly murky aspect of American History that racism was an influencial aspect of the political stage.