From the day he was born until the day he died, Norm Mineta was a role model. The world would be a better place if more elected officials had his grace, integrity and desire to improve the lives of his constituents.
Few politicians were more beloved than Mineta, the former Bay Area congressman who died Monday at the age of 90. He genuinely cared about every person he came across. Democrat or Republican. Young or old. Rich or poor. And it showed when he was in casual conversations with every-day people at restaurants and their workplaces, or intense political debates at City Hall, the U.S. Capitol or the White House.
Who else would have been chosen — and as effective — as a Cabinet member in both Democrat Bill Clinton’s and Republican George W. Bush’s administrations?
Just for a moment, take time to think about the experience of a 10-year-old Japanese American boy on May 29, 1942, the day he and his family were ordered to leave their San Jose home and board a train for an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyo. Mineta was wearing his Cub Scout uniform and holding his baseball bat, ball and glove. As he approached the train, an MP took his bat from him, saying it could be used as a lethal weapon.
It was perhaps Mineta’s greatest achievement to not let the appalling injustice that he and other Japanese Americans experienced transform him into a resentful, disillusioned man. He instead used it as motivation to do everything possible to help San Jose, the Bay Area and the nation live up to its ideals.
Mineta graduated from San Jose High and then UC Berkeley before serving for two years in the Army during the Korean War. He returned to San Jose and worked at his father’s insurance agency before being appointed to the City Council in 1967, making him the first person of color to serve on the council in the city’s 117-year history.
He ran for mayor in 1971 and won with 62% of the vote, at a time when the Asian American community made up less than 5% of the city’s population. He became the first San Jose mayor to deal with the city’s unchecked development and pushed hard for the unsuccessful effort to persuade Santa Clara County voters to join the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. That was the beginning of what became a lifelong advocacy for mass transit and transportation infrastructure.
He was elected to Congress in 1974 and served for 20 years, eventually becoming chair of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. He helped advance numerous Bay Area transportation projects, but his greatest achievement in Congress was likely winning passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which provided an apology and reparations to Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps during World War II.
When Mineta served as Commerce Secretary under Clinton, he was the first Asian American Cabinet member in U.S. history. Then, as Transportation Secretary under Bush, he remained calm on Sept.11, 2001, the day terrorist crashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Mineta ordered the 4,638 planes flying across the United States to land immediately, and, as he recalled, “In 2 hours and 20 minutes, all those planes were down safely and without incident, but it was a harrowing two or three hours.”
He oversaw the creation of the Transportation Security Administration to improve aviation security and in 2006 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civil honor.
When Bush presented the award, he said of Mineta, “He’s given his fellow citizens an example of leadership, devotion to duty and personal character.”
Well said. And a life well-lived.
