In one of the most vicious forms of discrimination ever sanctioned by u. s. laws, nearly 120,000 were placed in internment camps, where they remain for more than two years despite the total lack of evidence that they pose a security threat to the united states.

It was Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during WWII.

Explanation:

When the Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into WWII, it is estimated that there were close to 125,000 Japanese Americans living on the United States mainland.  Some of the Japanese were not eligible for citizenship at the time because they were born in Japan. But about 80,000 of the people who were placed in internment camps were actually second-generation -- it was their parents who had immigrated from Japan and these individuals had been born in the United States. In Japanese culture, the second-generation immigrants are called Nisei. They did have U.S. citizenship and yet they were still taken to the camps. In 1982, a presidential commission that investigated the events said that hysteria and race prejudice was what led to the internments and that the politicians at the time should have done more to counter the implementation of this practice. In 1988 the U.S. Congress passed an act that awarded more than 80,000 Japanese Americans with an amount of $20,000 in reparations. It was to compensate them for the injustice of having their freedom restricted and their rights violated in the camps.