What happened to German And Italian Americans during the Japanese Internment?

Well Germans and Italians, who by now had a significant native born population, were spared the indignity of internment camps. There was, however, a HUGE amount of anti-German sentiment during WWI. My great grandfather's German speaking Catholic school was ordered to speak in English and many German language newspapers shut their doors out of fear of reprisals. I had another great grandfather, also German, who was subject to police and military interogation after a jealous co-worker reported suspicions of him. There were reports of mobs lynching German-born immigrants.

Both German and Italian Americans experienced significant abridgement of their civil liberties during the war. In some cases, German or Italian American or immigrants were interned, just as the Japanese were. Additionally, there were exclusion zones created, and a sort of watch list generated, and those with suspected ties to Axis nations were pre-emptorily excluded from certain areas of "special sensativity." Finally, pursuant to Executive order 9066, enemy alien assets were frozen or seized.

Now, most of these measures were aimed directly at recent, non-American born immigrants, but they also sometimes included Americans of Italian or German descent, particularly if they had traveled back to "the old country" often, or had other obvious ties to the government of those countries.

A fairly credible set of sources I was able to find was:

My college professor told me that during WWII some Italians were detained and imprisoned. I would think the same thing happened to a few Germans because they were an equal enemy at the time. I do not know what Japanese Internment is but Italian/German conditions in the US might have changed if it occurred after the war ended.

Some were indeed held in various camps and others had limitations on there travel etc.

However keep in mind if it seems they were not treated as harshly as Japanese, and they were not, there was a good reason

The Japanese were close to invading the west coast of the US while the Germans were never close to a land invasion of the US at all.

The Japanese had a plan in place and aircraft carriers, which the Germans never did

Minor side note of interest, one of the reasons Italians were finally let go was due to the fact that one Italian American went to complain about his parents being held, and may have gone public about it, his name? Joe DiMaggio

About 11,000 Germans were detained during WWII as well as a few thousand Italians. The government was more concerned with Japanese spies than German or Italian spies.

They were noted as Niesei (my spelling is probably incorrect). yet they were seen a threat to nationwide protection and were despatched to detention camps. in many circumstances the camps were at military bases. citadel McCoy in Wisconsin replaced into one base that held them. The citadel also held some Nazi and eastern POWs.