If you think Americans of Japanese descent needed to be stripped of their liberty to protect them from white Americans, then you don’t have a terribly high opinion of white Americans. That’s a shame.
It was not about “protecting” them, no matter how leftists might want to spin it today. It was a panicky and racist decision that they couldn’t be trusted. And they were wrong - Japanese-Americans were highly decorated when we let them out of the camps and in to the Army.
It was both. I had a Japanese roommate in the 70s and her parents were in the camps. She said they were very grateful, because there was such vile prejudice on the outside of those camps.