The publication is reproduced in full below:
HONORING NORMAN MINETA
______
HON. JUDY CHU
of california
in the house of representatives
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Ms. CHU. Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Secretary Norman Mineta, who passed away on May 3, 2022, at the age of 90. Norm was a pioneer of Asian American representation in politics and was an exemplary patriot.
Norm was born in San Jose, California on November 12, 1931, to Japanese immigrant parents. In 1942, when he was just ten years old, Norm and his family were forcibly relocated from California to Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming, where they were imprisoned at a Japanese internment camp during World War II. After 18 months of incarceration, Norm and his family moved to the Chicago area, where his father, an insurance agent, volunteered to teach Japanese language courses to soldiers in the U.S. Army. Only when Norm was a teenager were he and his family finally able to return to San Jose.
After graduating from the University of California at Berkeley in 1953 with a degree in business administration, Norm served as an intelligence officer for the Army for three years and later took over his father's Mineta Insurance Agency. After serving on the San Jose Human Relations Commission, Norm was asked by San Jose's then-mayor to fill a city council vacancy in 1967. Following four successful years as a city councilmember, Norm was elected to be San Jose's mayor, making him the first Asian American to serve as mayor of a major American city.
With a staunch belief that local officials should have more authority over how federal funding is used to improve roads and railways, Norm decided to run for Congress, promising to address these very issues. And he did just that. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974, Norm went on to serve for ten terms from 1975 to 1995.
In Congress, Norm successfully fought to strengthen civil rights for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. He spearheaded efforts to pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted reparations to Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII or their surviving family members. In 1994, he co-founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus to ensure that AAPIs have a voice in Congress and served as the Caucus' first chair. Seeing the need to increase the AAPI public service pipeline in Washington, D.C., Norm also founded the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) in 1994. Since then, APAICS has played a critical role in cultivating future AAPI leaders through internships and fellowships, and many alumni have gone on to such remarkable positions, including within the White House and Capitol Hill.
Following his Congressional tenure, Norm was appointed to serve as Secretary of Commerce for the last six months of President Bill Clinton's term, making him the first Asian American member of a Presidential Cabinet. Then, under President George W. Bush, Norm became the first Cabinet Secretary to switch directly from a Democratic to Republican administration, where he served as Secretary of Transportation. Notably, he was also the only Democrat to serve in President Bush's cabinet, displaying his talents in bipartisan efforts. As Secretary of Transportation, Norm fought for investments in roads and bridges nationwide, and secured billions of dollars in federal funding for highways.
Norm's time as Secretary of Transportation was defined by the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. When the second plane struck the World Trade Center, Norm was moved to a secret bunker under the White House alongside Vice President Dick Cheney. It was here that Norm made the historic call to ground nearly 5,000 planes in U.S. airspace, an unprecedented decision for which protocols had never been established. Following the attacks, Norm regularly worked 100-hour weeks to bolster security at seaports, airports, railways and facilities with oil and gas lines. Furthermore, he spearheaded the effort to establish a new federal agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to successfully increase security at airports and avoid future attacks. In a time when Islamophobia was sharply exacerbated, Norm routinely drew parallels between his experience with Japanese American incarceration and scapegoating of Muslim Americans.
For his extraordinary accomplishments, the San Jose airport was renamed in 2001 to the Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. Additionally, Norm was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, by President George W. Bush in 2006. Norm is survived by his wife, Deni, his sons David, Stuart, Robert and Mark, and 11 grandchildren. He was truly a trailblazer and defined what it means to be a public servant, paving the way for generations of Asian American elected officials, like myself, to come. I ask my colleagues to join me in commemorating this extraordinary individual.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 119(1), Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 119(2)
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