When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor many US Citizens became irate with the local Japanese and treated them as prisoners of war. The history of this can be covered here:
Japanese Residents In The USA During World War 2 (Hover)
Michelle Malkin, a nationally syndicated writer, has published an extensive analysis of this event, which has stirred a lot of controversy. Her assertion is that there were good, valid reasons for the internment. Despite "research" to the contrary, there apparently actually quite a number of Japanese agents among the Japanese population of the West Coast.
I haven't studied this very extensively, and I am not an apologist for the decisions of a past generation, but I think there is much more to the story than is normally reported. I honestly don't know how I would have acted in the same situation, except that I do oppose anything similar after 9/11 regarding Arabs. I think that in situations such as the post-Pearl Harbor days, that national security does need to be carefully considered, and that profiling is vital, but that doesn't normally justify wholesale imprisonment.
One story that I know Mrs. Malkin tells is about a Japanese pilot who crashed on one of the remote islands in the Hawaiian chain. Some of the Japanese residents of the island, although patriotic citizens of the Hawaiian nation (at the time), helped the pilot to evade authorities, including helping with the murder of some of their fellow Japanese residents. Eventually, the pilot was killed by one of the other Japanese residents, before the island authorities were able to find him. However, if I remember rightly, it was in self defense.
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 854 85.4%
BUSH SIGNS BILL TO PRESERVE INTERNMENT CAMPS
President Bush has signed into law a $38 million grant program to preserve notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II.
Ref. https://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/23/int...s.ap/index.html
This was a great National Security Measure at the time and has been vindicated by military reports at the time that recorded SAEDA operations discovered and intercepted as a result of information gathered from the internment. It also led to a great Supreme Court decision that helps keep America from doing this sort of activity again.
What we did to Japanese Americans during WW II is a travesty. Most lost everything and still volunteered to fight for us, establishing their patriotism and valor by the deeds of the unit they were in during WW II. That unit is the most highly decorated unit of its size in history. It fought in Italy and France during the war. The other Japanese that weren't in that unit and went to the Pacific as interpreters would have been killed instantly had they been captured.
All that said, what is happening now is not synonymous to how we treated Japanese Americans. We are restricting travel for foreigners coming from an area that has an enemy intent on killing us. We did the same thing for all foreigners coming from enemy countries during WW II. Other than the fact that this was rolled out incredibly poorly and not explained at all I don't see why that is an issue. We chose those countries because they have no infrastructure to allow us to vet people and until we figure out how to vet we need to restrict people.