And did we put any members of the German American Bund into internment camps, or would it just have been less palatable to intern people with the same skin color?
I don't have a list of names to cross-reference, but I'd guess more than a few were. Their leader was stripped of his citizenship and kicked out of the country. A blanket internment of German-Americas was considered but deemed impractical:
>"Shortly after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained and arrested, as the government had been watching them.[26] Of the 254 persons not of Japanese ancestry evicted from coastal areas, the majority were ethnic German.[27] During WWII, German nationals and German Americans in the US were detained and/or evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.[28]"
> "In the 1940 US census, some 1,237,000 persons identified as being of German birth; 5 million persons had both parents born in Germany; and 6 million persons had at least one parent born in Germany.[25] German immigrants had not been prohibited from becoming naturalized United States citizens and many did so. The large number of German Americans of recent connection to Germany, and their resulting political and economical influence, have been considered the reason they were spared large-scale relocation and internment. "
Note also that in Hawaii, out of 150,000 Japanese-Americans, less than 2,000 were interned. In Hawaii Japanese-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern, as German-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern across America. However across the west-coast of mainland America, where the relative size of their population was much smaller, mass-interment of Japanese-Americas was considered practical and therefore enacted.
Another factor to consider is that America had already had a war with Germany, not many years before, so the loyalties of most German-Americans had already past muster in the eyes of many. Japan was considered a new unknown quantity. During WWI, anti-German sentiment across America was much stronger than it was during the subsequent war:
>"Shortly after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained and arrested, as the government had been watching them.[26] Of the 254 persons not of Japanese ancestry evicted from coastal areas, the majority were ethnic German.[27] During WWII, German nationals and German Americans in the US were detained and/or evicted from coastal areas on an individual basis. Although the War Department (now the Department of Defense) considered mass expulsion of ethnic Germans and ethnic Italians from the East or West coast areas for reasons of military security, it did not follow through with this. The numbers of people involved would have been overwhelming to manage.[28]"
> "In the 1940 US census, some 1,237,000 persons identified as being of German birth; 5 million persons had both parents born in Germany; and 6 million persons had at least one parent born in Germany.[25] German immigrants had not been prohibited from becoming naturalized United States citizens and many did so. The large number of German Americans of recent connection to Germany, and their resulting political and economical influence, have been considered the reason they were spared large-scale relocation and internment. "
Note also that in Hawaii, out of 150,000 Japanese-Americans, less than 2,000 were interned. In Hawaii Japanese-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern, as German-Americans were too numerous to mass-intern across America. However across the west-coast of mainland America, where the relative size of their population was much smaller, mass-interment of Japanese-Americas was considered practical and therefore enacted.
Another factor to consider is that America had already had a war with Germany, not many years before, so the loyalties of most German-Americans had already past muster in the eyes of many. Japan was considered a new unknown quantity. During WWI, anti-German sentiment across America was much stronger than it was during the subsequent war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment#United_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_language_in_the_United_...