Why were the internment camps closed so long after the end of the war?
Many internees were held years after the war ended because they were fighting deportation to Germany or Japan. (The last Germans were released from Ellis Island in 1949!) The U.S. apparently wasn’t comfortable releasing especially the Latin Americans since they didn’t have any legal status to be here, the U.S. Army having confiscated their passports & other ID documents en route. Eventually, the Latin countries allowed some Germans to return on a case-by-case basis, but Peru & others wouldn’t let the Japanese return home, so the ones who did not want to go to Japan were stuck in limbo for many years trying to get legal residency here. Some Nisei in WRA camps who were coerced into renouncing their U.S. citizenship were in a similar predicament. Were some of people incarcerated at the DOJ camps US citizens and roughly what percentage? The US citizen spouses and children of aliens were taken, or in some cases, “voluntarily” chose to enter camp, to keep their family together. The governmen
