Norman Mineta Interview (page: 2 / 9) Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation	Print Interview

What or who influenced you or motivated you or challenged you as a kid growing up?

Norman Mineta: Without a doubt, it was my parents, and especially my dad. My dad, as I said, left Japan at the age of 14, and he had an uncle who was working for Speckles Sugar Company in Speckles, California, and so he had written to his brother saying, "You ought to send one of your kids over here to the United States to see what farming techniques are like." They were a farming family in Japan.

My dad was the "number two" son, and everything goes to the "number one" son in Japan, so he decided he might as well go take a look. He said, "I didn't know that much about U.S. geography, so I got off the ship in Seattle." He was roughly 800 or 900 miles away from where he should be. It took him a year and a half to work from one lumber camp to a farm camp, from Seattle, all the way down to san José.

By the time he got to San José, he was 16 years old, and his uncle said, "You have got to learn English," so he put him in the first grade. Here he was, 16 years old. He said the most humiliating thing he ever had to do was to be put in the first grade at the age of 16. He said one of the problems was that some of those kids were as tall as he was, but it also makes you learn English very quickly.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I remember in his lifetime, I only saw him cry three times. Once was on the 7th of December, because he couldn't understand why the land of his birth had attacked the land of his heart. The second time was on the 29th of May, 1942, when we had boarded the train and we were coming out of San José on our way to go to Santa Anita, the race track in Southern California, and I saw him starting to cry the second time. The third time was 1956 when my mother passed away. So those are the only three times I ever saw my dad cry.

I came out of the service after the Korean War and joined him in the insurance business that he had started in 1920.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There was another person who was a very big influence in my life. It was a very close family friend by the name of I.K. Ishimatsu. Mr. Ishimatsu was a very successful lettuce grower, but he always said that one of the reasons why we were evacuated and interned was because we had no connection to the political world. So in 1946, people were returning to San José from camp. They had nothing, literally nothing, but yet he would go around collecting a dollar or 50 cents, whatever he could, and then he would get the money to send two people to the Democratic Jackson Day dinner or two people to the Republican Party Lincoln dinner, and just to get exposure of young Japanese Americans into political connections.

By 1960, I became a beneficiary of one of those tickets, so I would say between my dad, my mother and Mr. Ishimatsu, and the firm hand of my three sisters and my brother, they were my influence.

Are there any books you remember, any films you remember?

Norman Mineta: When we were evacuated, we went to Santa Anita first, the race track.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. What the Army had done was to commandeer all the race tracks and county fairgrounds in Washington, Oregon, and California, because they had built-in living quarters, namely, the horse stables. So we were in Santa Anita, but fortunately, by the time we got there, all the horse stables had been filled, so we lived in barracks buildings in the parking lot. And then, in October of '42, we were moved by train from Santa Anita to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, which is about 20 miles east of Cody.

When we got there in early November, the schools hadn't been built yet, and in the meantime, one of my sisters had gotten a job in Chicago. She would send me books, things like Gulliver's Travels and all the old Mark Twain stories and then she would write to me, asking me questions. That was the teacher coming out in her. She wanted to become a teacher, but ended up being a secretary. She would write these questions and I would have to write back to her about various books, but I remember Gulliver's Travels was the first book that I got when I was at camp.

My wife asked me about what was the first movie that I remember, and it was Citizen Kane with Orson Welles. I saw it in 1943, in camp, in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. One of these days I am going to get that movie and watch it again. As a 12-year-old, it really scared me. Even now, I can picture Orson Welles sitting at the end of that long table and also seeing Rosebud, the sled, catching on fire in the fireplace. One of these days I will go back and view that film.

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