Interviews

1. How he got into politics

2. “Work hard at the job you’re at”

3. Beginnings of CWRIC

4. Finding supporters for the bill

5. Getting Jim Wright to sponsor the bill

6. Findings of the commission report

7. Bill 442

8. Speaker pro tem on the day the bill went to the House

9. Citizen participation

10. The last hurdle – President Reagan

11. Signing of the bill

12. “No racial profiling”

Mineta,Norman Yoshio

(b. 1931) U.S. Former Secretary of Transportation

Bill 442

You can't reserve a number, but what you have to do is to drop the bill in about the time that the bill will come up and then as they stamp these bills, that'll get the number 442. So I went to the House parliamentarian, and I said, "Charlie, when should I drop this bill in, 'cause I want 442." Told him the significance of the Regimental Combat Team and everything, and I said, "I want to get 442 on this bill." So he said, "Well, wait about ten days, and then I'll tell you when to drop the bill in. And then as it comes through, I'll just hold it back and make sure we get 442."

So Charlie Johnson was the House parliamentarian and he's the one who helped me get the number 442 on that bill. And then after that we, it took eight years to get it passed, so every two years I'd have to drop the bill in at the proper time get H.R. 442 in the succeeding Congresses for that legislation.

governments politics Redress movement

Date: July 4, 2008

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Tom Ikeda

Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

Interviewee Bio

Norman Mineta was born on November 12, 1931 in San Jose, California. He and his family were incarcerated at the Heart Mountain internment camp during World War II.

He began his political career when he was appointed to a vacant San Jose City Council seat in San Jose and was elected to the seat the following term, followed by vice mayor and then becoming Mayor of San Jose in 1971.

Mineta served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1995 and was a key figure behind the passage of H.R. 442, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which officially apologized for and redressed the unconstitutional, mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

In 2000, he became the first Asian American to hold a post in the presidential cabinet when President Clinton appointed Mineta as his Secretary of Commerce. The following year, President George W. Bush appointed him Secretary of Transportation, the only Democrat in Bush's cabinet, where he served as the longest serving Secretary of Transportation since the position was created in 1967. (December 2011)