[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 119 (Tuesday, July 19, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E752]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         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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