Final answer:
The claim that all German and Italian Americans were sent to internment camps like Japanese Americans is false. Only a small portion of Germans and Italians were interned, based on suspicions of disloyalty, whereas Japanese Americans faced mass internment regardless of individual guilt.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that all German and Italian Americans were sent to internment camps during World War II, just like Japanese Americans, is false. While it is true that over 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans were subject to internment under Executive Order 9066, the situation for German and Italian Americans was significantly different. Though thousands of Germans and Italians were indeed interned, this represented only a small fraction of the overall populations of these groups in the United States. The internment policies were not applied on the same sweeping basis as they were for Japanese Americans, who were rounded up en masse solely based on their ancestry rather than individual suspicion of disloyalty.
Conditions in the internment camps were harsh and unjust for Japanese Americans, with overcrowded housing, families being separated, a loss of property and dignity, and the perpetual stigma of being considered disloyal. Despite this treatment, many Japanese Americans demonstrated their loyalty to the United States, with thousands serving in the U.S. military. In contrast, the internment of German and Italian nationals was largely based on suspicions of connections to Nazi or fascist sympathies.
The experiences of World War II internment had lasting effects on the Japanese American community. The U.S. government officially recognized the injustice of these actions, with formal apologies and reparations coming decades later in the latter part of the 20th century.