Well, remember- there were two classes of Japanese-American internees:
a. Those who were residents of the USA but were citizens of the Japanese Empire.
b. Those who were American citizens but of Japanese ancestry.
Everyone interned “enemy aliens”. Us, the British, the Germans, the Canadians, the Japanese, etc. In theory they were sworn to do their duty by the nation they were a citizen of. In a way, this also protected them. If a American (for example) hadn’t been interned by the Nazis, and thus had worked, he could have been accused of treason after the war. (This was also done in WWI.) The internment of Japanese citizens was not wrong or shameful.
However, the USA also interned quite a large number of American citizens simply due to their ancestry. This was wrong and shameful.
I think the distinction is blurred a bit in that it was impossible for Japanese immigrants to gain American citizenship (something that in itself was wrong and shameful). When I hear of an American interned in Germany during the war I picture someone in Berlin on business for IBM, not someone who had been living there for decades.
Also, while the US did intern German citizens during the war, they did so on a case-by-case basis. They did not attempt to intern German citizens en masse.
At the start of World War II, under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the United States government detained and interned over 11,000 German enemy aliens. They were all either former civilians or citizens of Germany. Their ranks included immigrants to the U.S. as well as visitors stranded in the U.S. by hostilities. In many cases, the families of the internees were allowed to remain together at internment camps in the U.S. In other cases, families were separated. Limited due process was allowed for those arrested and detained.
About the Japanese internment *:Somewhere between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were subject to this mass exclusion program, of whom about two-thirds were U.S. citizens.[2] The remaining one-third were non-citizens subject to internment under the Alien Enemies Act;… *
Technically, that is not true. We had many Italian citizens during WWII, because the primary wave of Italian immigrants was largely still around. I know my ancestors naturalized during WWII after having been in the country several decades.
What I was refering to (and I assume you get this): We couldn’t intern Italian-Americans or German-Americans (i.e citizens) I have no issue with detaining resident aliens.