By Channing Joseph

A Virginia mayor compared banning Syrian refugees from resettling in the United States to the decision to keep Japanese-Americans imprisoned during World War II -- and he thinks that's actually a good thing.

“I am convinced that it is presently imprudent to assist in the relocation of Syrian refugees to our part of Virginia,” Roanoke Mayor David Bowers wrote in a statement, citing the bombing of a Russian airliner in October and last week’s terror attacks in Paris.

“I’m reminded that President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then.”

For the record, many consider Japanese internment during WWII to be one of the most shameful acts in American history.

Here’s a refresher: After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up more than 100,000 men, women and children of Japanese descent -- most of whom were American citizens -- and imprisoned them camps from 1942 to 1946.

Years later, the federal government finally admitted that there had been little evidence of disloyalty among U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry and that the internment of so many innocent people had been wrong. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, apologizing for the camps and authorizing $1.2 billion in payments to survivors.

Before the bill was signed into law, Rep. Robert Matsui, a California Democrat who was imprisoned in an internment camp as child, spoke to Congress about his experiences.

“My mother and father were in their 20s, born and raised here, trying to start their careers and with a child 6 months old,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1987. “But after Pearl Harbor their lives were shattered. ... My father could not talk about it for 40 years so I did not understand what happened until the 1980s. I was in a prisoner of war camp. How could I, as a 6-month-old child, be declared by my government to be an enemy alien?”

President Obama recently said of anti-refugee politicians, "Now they are scared of 3-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”