FDR and the Democrats were wrong to intern American citizens without due proces, and about 2/3 of those interned were citizens.
"The federal government contended that its decision to exclude
ethnic Japanese from the West Coast was justified by "military ne-
cessity." Careful review of the facts by the Commission has not re-
vealed any security or military threat from the west coast ethnic
Japanese in 1942. The record does not support the claim that mili-
tary necessity justified the exclusion of the ethnic Japanese from
the West Coast, with the consequent loss of property and personal
liberty.
The decision to detain followed indirectly from the alleged
military necessity for exclusion. No one offered a direct military
justification for detention; the war Relocation Authority adopted
detention primarily in reaction to the vocal popular feeling that
people whom the government considered too great a threat to re-
main at liberty on the west coast should not rive freely elsewhere.
The WRA contended that the initial detention in relocation centers
was necessary for the evacuees' safety, and that controls on
departure would assure that the ethnic Japanese escaped mistreat-
ment by other Americans when they left the camps. It follows,
however, from the commission's conclusion that no military ne-
cessity justified the exclusion that there was no basis for this detention."
Personal Justice Denied The following files link to pages from the publication, Personal Justice Denied.
www.archives.gov
The Japanese-American internment camps were often nothing more than makeshift barracks, with families and children cramped together behind barbed wires. Most of the internees were U.S. citizens from the West Coast who were forced to abandon or liquidate their businesses when war relocation authorities escorted them to the camps.
John Tateishi says the experience was both humiliating and disorienting. "We came out of these camps with a sense of shame and guilt, of having been considered betrayers of our country." He says that after the war most families never spoke about it. "There were no complaints, no big rallies or demands for justice because it was not the Japanese way."