So we need to do some parsing here, and a bit of asking for clarification, that hopefully you can help with OP.

Do you mean what is the place in the historical consciousness for the experience of American civilians and others that found themselves in Japanese custody when war came?

Or Japanese war imprisonment in general, so POW camps and the like?

We can also say that in general part of the inequality is one of simple math. There were FAR more Japanese Americans, than Americans living in Japan in 1941, this being the result of a long history of Asian immigration as cheap labor into the American West. While new immigration was greatly restricted in the decades prior to WW2 the Japanese community was able to wrangle some exceptions and was into the 100's of thousands by war in Hawaii and the mainland. Japan meanwhile has a marked history of even once no longer being a closed country, of down to today being very homogeneous with little interest or policy carved out for foreign immigration. But that is not to say that no American or Allied civilians didn't come under their authority, the conquest of the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the rest of the Dutch East Indies meant many Western civilians were now under Japanese authority.

And that did mean many were herded into camps, under brutal conditions, in part informed by Japanese doctrine providing little room for comfort or resources for prisoners of any type beyond immediate usefulness, and in part by the deteriorating supply lines under siege by the USN strangling the Japanese Empire. The Philippines are an especially interesting study as the native Filipino population in many cases protected a large and active resistance movement which was a combined venture with those remaining US fighters, and clandestine supply by sub, etc, which does get very little mention in most overviews.

In general though I would simply say that no class can cover everything in a limited time, and what is covered or learned is so often a reflection of teacher interest, student engagement, time, and place. And other incidents and trends often are substituted to also illustrate the decidedly brutal and racially charged nature of the Pacific War.

But I would contend that there certainly is NOTHING about it, and indeed some high profile references to bring this aspect of the war into the public narrative mostly in the form of films. In 1987 you have Empire of the Sun, a Speilberg film about a young upper class British boy in occupied Shanghai, played by a young Christian Bale! While much more recent The Great Raid was a box office flop, but remains one of the few WW2 movies to ever be set in the Philippines, it depicts Army Rangers successful liberation of a POW camp on Luzon, but also fits within a larger conscious effort by forces under MacArthur to prioritize liberating any sort of camp, including the even larger special mission at the internment camp at Los Baños.

While for Japanese conduct towards POW's it has in general always been part of the common narrative I would contend, and really was very soon after the war. Events like the Bataan Death March, or execution of prisoners on Wake Island were prominent in propaganda, and depictions of the virtuous Allied soldier suffering and resisting the inhuman lash of the Japanese who must be supported are far from uncommon. While the fictionalized account The Bridge on the River Kwai has come down as one of the most lauded films of that time, accuracy be damned.

The issue with the Japanese internment camps was that American citizens were interned.