Norman Mineta was born in San Jose, California, to Japanese immigrant parents. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Mineta and others of Japanese heritage were sent to isolation camps. After spending three years in a camp in Wyoming, Mineta was allowed to return to San Jose. In 1953 he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a business degree. He served in the U.S. army until 1956, when he left to work at his father’s insurance business. Mineta joined the San Jose city council in 1967, becoming the city’s first minority council member. In 1971 he was elected mayor of San Jose and in 1974 Mineta moved on to the U.S. House of Representatives. As representative, he helped pass a bill to return retirement benefits to Japanese American civil servants who had had them taken away during World War II. Mineta helped secure passage in 1987 of a bill that paid $1.2 billion to about 120,000 Japanese Americans whose homes were taken from them during World War II. The bill also provided an official apology by the federal government for its internment policy. Mineta retired from the House in 1995.
