The Japanese-Americans and those interned at Guantanamo had at least one thing in common in addition to involuntary incarceration. The Japanese did not know how long they would be confined since they did not know when the war would end. Prisoners at Guantanamo do not know how long they will be confined because they have been labeled "enemy combatants," and like Japanese Americans during World War II, they can be held indefinitely.

....The prisoners at Guantanamo are depressed. They do not know when they will get out and they have no access to courts. They are held at the whim of an administration that has whipped its populace into such a fervor that people no longer care about human rights if their leaders tell them that caring would put their own safety in jeopardy. There is, however, one bright spot learned as a result of the Japanese experience.

At some point the people in the United States will begin to feel guilty about how the prisoners have been treated. They will acknowledge that it is inhumane to hold people indefinitely, even when the people of the United States are (or in the case of their leaders, pretend to be, in order to make the people more pliant) afraid. In the case of the Japanese-Americans it took approximately 44 years for that to happen. If our sensitivity curve remains intact, most of the people at Guantanamo can expect to be freed by 2048 and perhaps even given some remuneration. That should cheer them up. It doesn't have the same effect on me.