“His supporters think Japanese internment was good.”
Maybe they are more thoughtful than modern progressives. Of course internment was not good. However, things could have been worse. Modern progressives, only semi-literate in most cases and almost inevitably not well-educated, probably have no idea how bad it was for German-Americans during WWI. Social shunning just scratched the surface. Beatings and other acts of violence were also common. I knew elderly Germans in the Midwest in 1960 who were still in shock over how they were treated in WWI because they spoke English with a heavy German accent and had German names. Think how much worse it would have been for Japanese, who differed in appearance, too.
Suppose Roosevelt, the sainted progressive of his day, had not interned the Japanese. Remember that Americans of the early 1940s were violent, racist, bigots by today’s standards. Progressives always point this out, but then fail to understand its potential consequences.
Suppose there had been a “terror attack” by a Japanese or Japanese-American in 1942 like the one that just occurred in San Bernadino, even against a military target. How many innocent Japanese and Japanese-Americans would have been killed in the massive race riots that would almost certainly have followed?
Internment, especially internment that was carried out as unjustly as the one under Roosevelt, is bad, no doubt about it. But it could have been much, much worse. And by the way, Progressives, prison camps are just one aspect of the totalitarian government you long for so greatly. So get used to them.
It wasn’t just the Germans...Hungarian immigrants and their all American descendants and any Americans whose ancestors came here from any of the German allies, in WW I, were treated badly; their stores boycotted, services not hired, products not bought, etc.! Even some products, like “Danish” pastry ( there’s NOTHING “Danish: about it...it’s a Hungarian pastry ! )were called something completely different.