US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta began hearing requests to ban Muslim Americans and Muslims from all airlines and also arrange to arrest and prosecute them as soon as four dangerous, coordinated attacks on American soil were identified as having been carried out on September 11, 2001.
In the tumultuous hours and days that followed the problems, Mineta was unaware that the federal government’s handling of his childhood bombing of Pearl Harbor almost 60 years earlier do play a significant role in decisions about how the George W. Bush presidency responded to September 11th.
Enduring the military difficulties
Earlier that flower, President Bush had invited Mineta and his wife, Deni, to spend time at Camp David, the presidential surrender. The leader inquired about Mineta’s prison during World War II after dinner one night.
For three days, Mineta, an 11-term member of Congress who also had served as President Bill Clinton’s secretary of commerce, shared his experience of war confinement and its results on him and his community.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the government to seize and expel people of Asian descent from their West Coast houses on February 19, 1942. Parmi the roughly 110, 000 people, women, and children of Chinese ancestry who were escorted by armed soldiers to hastily constructed federal detention facilities in lonely inland places were Mineta, his relatives, three sisters, and a nephew.
They were imprisoned for the duration of the combat without being charged because they shared a contest with the opponent.
Mineta’s families, Kunisaku and Kane Mineta, and another first-generation refugees from Japan were prohibited by federal laws from becoming native people. No matter how unfazed they were by the declaration of war, they were still considered opponent creatures. Their US-born children, like fresh Norm, were included in the military confinement commands as “non-aliens” – the president’s name invented to prevent recognizing that they were natural-born US citizens.
In the springtime of 1942, before the home was rounded up by the military, Mineta’s husband’s business license for his insurance company was suspended and the home bank records were confiscated. Because they could only bring what they could bring, the home made a desperate effort to get rid of their home goods. Ten-year-old Norm’s excellent grief was having to give away his puppy, Skippy. And still, when he boarded a train with his home for an undisclosed location, Mineta was wearing his Cub Scout costume to present his loyalty.
The Minetas arrived at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia, California, in May 1942, and six months later were transferred to the Heart Mountain Relocation Center near Cody, Wyoming. The Minetas and those incarcerated at nine different government-run tents where the president’s War Relocation Authority resided during the war times surrounded by barbed wire, under floodlights, and armed men in safeguard buildings aimed guns at them.
From San Jose to Washington
In his preface to my reserve, When Can We Go Back to America? In spite of the crushing injustice of endless prison without justification, Mineta describes how he was raised to become optimistic about the luxury of being an American citizen.
Following the conclusion of the war, the Mineta home prioritized rebuilding their lives and standing in the community. In his freshman season, Mineta was elected president of the student body at San Jose High School. He received his degree from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1953.
He joined his father’s insurance company and became involved in local politics after serving three times as an Army intelligence official during the Korean War. He became the first Asian American president of a big American city in 1971 and became the president of San Jose. Next in 1974 he became the first Chinese National from outside of Hawaii to be elected to the U. S. House of Representatives.
He was one of the few people to serve two president from different political parties, and he was the only Democrat in Bush’s government, making him the first Asian American to do so.
Changing the course of story
Secretary Mineta was present at the White House the day after the problems when they met with the leader, cabinet members, and legislative leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties. Egyptian Americans, Muslims, and people from Middle Eastern nations expressed their problems as the conversation progressed toward detention facilities.
Mineta later recalled the president saying,” We want to make sure that what happened to Norm in 1942 does n’t happen today”. Bush after explained:
One of the most significant aspects of Norm’s life is that sometimes we lose our souls as a country. The notion of” all similar under God” often disappears. And 9/11 truly challenged that idea. So, right away after 9/11, I was extremely worried that our nation may reduce its way and address those who might not worship like their neighbors as non-citizens. But, I went to a mosque. And in some way, Norm’s case inspired me. In other words, I did n’t want our country to do to others what had happened to Norm.
The Department of Transportation sent warning emails to big airlines and aircraft organisations on September 21, 2001, following Mineta’s instructions, warning against racial profiling, targeting, or other forms of discrimination against people who appeared to be Middle Eastern, Muslim, or both. The concept reminded the carriers that” not only is it bad, but it is also illegal to discriminate against individuals based on their race, ethnicity, or faith”. The airport security measures were being made to be unjustly biased, according to the statement.
Five years later, in December 2006, Bush presented Mineta with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the government’s highest civic pride, paying tribute to Mineta’s life of community service. While the state of the 32nd US president would never recognize Mineta as a member, the 43rd president called him a soldier and” an example of authority, devotion to duty and personal personality” to his fellow people.
In 2019, Mineta reflected on how his childhood experience, and the events of 9/11, taught him about how vulnerable U. S. civilians are to being rounded up and detained when the nation is under threat:” You think it wo n’t happen again? Yeah, it can”.
Susan H. Kamei, the director of the Spatial Sciences Institute at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, is a lecturer in history.
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