Brian Witt and Terence Hsieh
Norman Mineta
ANAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Norman Mineta, who served as U.S. federal transportation secretary after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, broke down the race of Asian-Americans in high government positions, who died on May 3. obstacles and ordered the grounding of commercial flights. He died on May 3. is 90.
Mineta died peacefully at his home in Edgewater, Maryland, east of the capital, surrounded by his family, said John Flaherty, Mineta’s former chief of staff.
“The cause of his death was a heart attack,” Flaherty added. “He was an extraordinary civil servant and a very close friend.”
Mineta became mayor of San Jose, California, early in his political career, breaking down racial barriers for Asian Americans. He later became the first Asian-American to become a federal cabinet secretary, serving under Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican George W Bush.
Bush went on to award Mineta the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In a statement, the former president said Mineta was “a wonderful American story of a man who overcame adversity and prejudice to serve in the U.S. Army, Congress and the cabinets of two presidents.”
“As my Secretary of Transportation, he showed excellent leadership in helping to prevent further attacks on 9/11 and beyond. As I said in awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Noam has provided his country with a lifetime of In service, he set an example of leadership, devotion and personal character to his fellow citizens,” the former president said.
The son of Japanese immigrants who spent two years of his childhood in a World War II concentration camp, Mineta began his political career in his hometown of San Jose before joining the Clinton administration as secretary of commerce before crossing party lines to serve in Bush’s cabinet .
As Bush’s secretary of transportation, Mineta led the department during the September 11, 2001 crisis, when a hijacked commercial airliner flew toward American landmarks. After the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center, Mineta ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to ground all civilian aircraft — more than 4,500 were in flight at the time. It was the first such order in U.S. aviation history.
Mineta’s subsequent mission was to restore confidence in air travel in the wake of the terrorist attacks. He oversaw the hasty creation of the Transportation Security Administration, which took over responsibility for aviation safety from airlines.
The University of Washington hosted a special event with Norman Mineta in 2019, featuring a special screening of the documentary “Norman Mineta and His Legacy: An American Story.” (Photo by Assunta Ng)
Within a year, the TSA employed tens of thousands of airport screeners, equipped commercial flights with air police, and installed high-tech equipment to carry out bomb checks on air travelers and their luggage.
The effort was derided at the time as a waste of money and led to long queues at the airport. But Mineta, widely loved and respected in Washington for his in-depth knowledge of transportation issues, has managed to avoid the onslaught of such criticism.
In 2006, he resigned at 74 after five and one-half years in office, becoming the longest-serving transport secretary since the agency’s inception in 1967.
Norman Yoshio Mineta was born on November 12, 1931, when he and his parents were sent to the Heart Mountain Internment Camp in Wyoming after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, when he was 10 years old and wearing a Boy Scout uniform.
He went on to graduate from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and served as an Army intelligence officer in South Korea and Japan. After three years in the military, he returned to San Jose to run his father’s Mineta Insurance Company.
Mineta entered politics in 1967 when the mayor of San Jose appointed him to fill a vacant seat on the city council. He won re-election and served on the city council for four years before winning the city’s top seat in 1971, making him the first Asian-American mayor of a major city. It now has an airport named after him.
Mineta was elected to Congress in 1974 and served 10 terms on behalf of Silicon Valley. During his tenure, he pushed for more funding for the FAA and co-authored a landmark law that gave state and local governments control over highway and mass transit decisions.
The co-founder of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also scored a personal victory in helping to pass the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 Apologize.
The former detainees also received compensation of $20,000 each.
In 1993, Mineta became chairman of the House Public Works and Transportation Committee — again for the first time — but he lost the job quickly after Republicans won control of the House in 1994.
Mineta resigned from Congress in 1995 to join Lockheed Martin as senior vice president of its transportation division, which builds and operates electronic toll collection systems.
But five years later, when Clinton named him to replace William Daly as secretary of commerce in the final months of his presidency, Washington called again.
Mineta then became the first cabinet secretary to switch directly from a Democratic administration to a Republican administration. He is the only Democrat in Bush’s cabinet.
As transportation secretary, Mineta successfully pushed for private investment in roads and bridges such as the Chicago Viaduct and the Indiana Turnpike, and helped secure the passage of a $286 billion highway spending plan after arguing with Congress for nearly two years.
After overseeing the TSA’s rapid start, Mineta shrunk his department by nearly two-thirds in 2003, when the TSA and the Coast Guard were transferred to the Department of Homeland Security in the largest government restructuring in nearly 60 years.
After retiring from public service, he joined public relations firm Hill & Knowlton as vice chairman and settled near Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, with his wife, Danealia.
