WWII Question?

Question

How come the Japenese got put in interment camp but the Germans and the Italians and all the people on Germany's side didn't? Just wondering...

Answer 1

There are a number of reasons. The most common one is prejudice, and there is a lot to it. But another was they (the Japanese) were interned because THEY COULD BE. They were a small group concentrated in a limited area (California), who could be easily identified.

Not so the Germans. They were numerous (23% of the population!) and everywhere! Also, as the arguement ran, they had "proven" their loyalty to America in the First World War.

There were few Hungarians, Romanians, and Fins in the country. And, like the Italians, they were not considered a threat to American security.

After the Japanese started winning victories over the "white" peoples (British and Americans), white Americans felt threatened by Japanese Americans (They MUST be spies and saboteurs, how else could Japan be defeating us?). By interning them, the government bowed to public sentiment.

Today we know all that was a lot of BS. But back then people were frightened, and we do a lot of stupid stuff when we are running scared.

Answer 2

There were actually a couple of internment camps for Germans and Italians. Though not known to the extent of the Japanese internments, these internment camps were not only for German and Italian-American Citizens, but some were used as POW camps. YES THERE WERE BOTH. It is an undeniable fact. Some of the most famous Neo-Nazis came out of these German Internment camps. One of the reasons some were put in there in the first place with their fanatical fascist beliefs. Though very wrong, and a bad political move for the time, German, Italian and Japanese-Americans were mass moved to internment camps throughout the country during WWII in the mistaken belief that some might be helping the enemy.

Answer 3

Glad to see all the usual Politically Correct answers here

It was done for good reason, Mainland US was about to be attacked by Japan, or so we believed, and to leave all the Japanese free to roam about and prepare for that attack would have been foolish. There was no threat of an east coast attack by Germany so it was not needed

However

Germans and Italians WERE rounded up and put in internment camps anyway, just not in as great a number as it was not needed. Many others were required to carry special Photo ID's and were not allowed to travel more then 5 miles from there homes. Many had possessions seized that could be used to help the enemy, like boats and such.

Two Italian Immigrants i know of had all of that happen to them in spite of the fact that their son was serving in the US Army at the time, and was one of the most beloved Americans of the day. Joe Dimaggio

Answer 4

Joey is right. There were internment camps for the Germans as well during World War II:

From Wikipedia:
During World Wars I and II, many people deemed to be a threat due to enemy connections were interned in the US. This included people not born in the U.S. and also U.S. citizens of Japanese (in WWII), Italian (in WWII), and German ancestry. In particular, over 100,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans and Germans and German-Americans were sent to camps such as Manzanar during the second World War. Some compensation for property losses was paid in 1948, and the U.S. government officially apologized for the internment in 1988, saying that it was based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership", and paid reparations to former Japanese inmates who were still alive, while paying no reparations to interned Italians or Germans.

Answer 5

I think this was an outcome of obvious racial prejudice. Japanese people looked different than the average white American, so they were obviously (?) more likely to be an enemy than a nice, white caucasian German or Italian. No American citizen should have been interned unless they were guilty of an actual crime. Unfortunately we see much of the same prejudice today, though not on the same scale, against people of middle-eastern descent.

We don't have internment camps, unless you count Guantanimo and the Bush administration's secret prisons in foreign countries. And we also have the government once again abusing human rights and civil liberties with warrantless spying on American citizens, suspension of habeus corpus, and Presidential approval of torture and indefinite imprisonment without criminal charges or legal representation.

Like the wise man said, history repeats itself. And some people just don't learn.

Answer 6

Because the Americans at that time, like the Americans of any time, had a lot of racial prejudice. Citizens of Japanese origin did not look like what we thought real Americans look like, so it was easy to intern them under the guise of "national security", a concept that hides many sins and crimes.

Citizens of German or Italian extraction looked like Americans. There's also the possibility that because most German and Italian American citizens were from families that had been here for generations, while most of the Japanese families were of more recent immigration, enabled the German and Italian descendants to be more accepted.

Note to Towanda: the camp you are speaking of was probably a German POW camp. There were many in America and that is vastly different from interning citizens.

Answer 7

You're misinformed, because Germans and Italians were put in internment camps. The difference is that all Germans and Italians weren't put in camps, because there were to many of them. Germans were the largest group of immigrants to come to the US and short of interning millions, it couldn't happen at the same scale as the Japanese. Most of the Germans & Italians rounded up had ties to German Bund, weren't yet citizens, or had ties to other fascist groups.

Answer 8

Germans and Italians were put into internment camps but not at the same level as the Japanese.

Answer 9

I know for a fact that there was a German interment camp out in the hills past St. Louis. No one talked about it but it was there. I've heard people talk about seeing the German soldiers being seen on boats on the Mississippi and were kept at Jefferson Barracks (St. Louis county) during the war. My parents were of German descent and all they ever said to me was that it was not a good time to be of German descent. The interment of the Japanese was a horrible thing. It took a long time for reparations . . .but then can you ever make something like that up to those families. . .

Answer 10

italians revolted themselves against the fascist dictatorship, creating an antifascist goverment in southern italy in 1943, arresting the dictator benito mussolini, and in the north the italian partisans fought as a revolution army against nazi fascist, with the support of USA an UK
this is in Japan doesn't happen