It's always uncertain to predict what if's from WWII. Today, we look back at Executive Order 9066, or Generalplan Ost, or the Holocaust, and correctly evaluate these policies as barbaric and immoral. I am not going to try to defend them, as they were horrible moments in history, but I think they are all explained by conservative politics in the 1930's and going into the early 1940's. As awful as it is to look back and see how viscious the human race was in the past, it wasn't that long ago (19th century) when imperialism was the general policy of many European countries. This sort of imperialism wasn't just collecting territory, it generally involved genocide. And by genocide, I mean that the king, queen, tsar, kaiser, emporer, or whoever was in charge of enacting imperialistic policies, would look at a territory and say "Gee, I wish that X ethnic group didn't live there anymore, because that land has Y resource that the empire really wants." Y could be oil, wood, farmland, or even just a place to put more people. X could be any Native American tribe (USA), Circassians (Russia), Armenians (Ottoman Empire), or basically any group that had less sophisticated weapons than the invading empire. WWI came along and should have ended all of that. The German, Austo-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires were destroyed, the Spanish and Russian Empires collapsed under its own weight, and the British, Dutch, French, Italian, and Portuguese Empires were shedding overseas territories rapidly, as Imperialism was no longer viable. But, sadly, the USA wasn't really in a position to learn from the mistakes of other nations, and Germany, Italy, and Japan were trying to (re-)establish their empires, as if it were still 1880. It absolutely doesn't excuse any of the terrible policies enacted, but maybe it explains how these ultra-conservative political groups maybe didn't seem as outlandish as they do today. So, on to order 9066. The order didn't mention ethnicity of any sort, rather, it gave power to the military to restrict people's movements and general liberties and human rights indiscriminantly. Obviously, the Japanese Americans were the most cited as group who ended up in concentration camps because of this executive order, but many European Jews also ended up in American internment camps, not because of their Jewish heritage, but because they had fled from Germany and Italy, and the military was looking to confine anyone coming from those places as a potential threat. So, two scenarios, and maybe kind of a "duh" moment when I list those, but: 1. These people posed no threat to the USA, and their treatment was simply unnecessary. or 2. A small portion of these people might have carried out attacks on US security if they had not been contained. Scenario one is the accepted scenario, by the way. In that case, had order 9066 never existed, there would have been more Japanese Americans and also European immigrants in America who would have gone about their lives and been more prosperous after the war, rather than having to focus on rebuilding their lives from the ground up. Those people might have provided further support for the USA in the war, leading to fewer losses. And, at the very least, it would have saved the USA from having to pay reparations in apology decades later. In scenario two, which is not likely, but possible, some attacks on the USA from within could have led to even more anti-Japanese or anti-immigrant sentiment in the USA, leading to something worse than order 9066, unless the people at the time decided to become much more forward-thinking than we know that they were. Ultimately, order 9066, most likely harmed the USA for the sake of securing an unlikely threat. That said, if there were some people intending to attack the USA from one of the targetted groups, there is no reason to expect them to have ever complied with order 9066 anyway; they would have been likely to form underground terrorist cells. If anything like that happened, it was ineffective enough to conclude that it didn't matter in the long run.

We'll never know. These things have always been done during times of war to protect against espionage and sabotage. Who can say they wouldn't have done such had they been allowed to collaborate and move about freely. Japan attacked us out of nowhere! We weren't even involved in the war before that. We had chosen neutrality. One thing is for sure, they were treated much better than the holocaust victims or the Native Americans during the Trail of Tears! At least they had food clothing and shelter, medical care (something many Americans today don't have!) AND they were transported, not forced to walk and fend for themselves like the trail of tears. I don't think it was racial at all! They were reacting to an unprovoked attack! Military measures had to be taken. I also don't think screening aliens that want to enter the US is a bad thing either. We need to make sure they are not coming here to start trouble. And it has nothing to do with religion, race, location, or color. It has to do with protecting American lives. You don't know how many of those people lived because they weren't free to roam the streets during a time of war hysteria and racial tension! Many might have been killed by mobs! Being interned may have saved their lives for all we know.