<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So I'm gonna now jump to another topic 'cause it's getting to the end of our interview. You know, a couple weeks ago I was in Los Angeles attending the Japanese American National Museum gala, and it was, this is 2012 and they honored Norm Mineta, who is from San Jose.

YU: Right.

TI: And you did the introduction for that, and I wanted to ask you, the role, or how you supported Norm, because Norm Mineta is a national figure, as a Japanese American, one of the most prominent Japanese Americans in the United States. And I just wanted to get a sense of how you supported Norm in his career.

YU: Well, one of the things that I learned was that you have to be politically involved with what's going on around you, otherwise things happen and you are ignorant and many politicians write legislation and policy, and you're sunk because they are passed. So I always felt that we should be politically strong. And I remember, and I.K. Ishimatsu, who was a farmer here, he also, I got to know him well, and he felt the same way that I did and so we got to be very good friends. And he said, "We got to find somebody." So we kept looking at people, but there was not the kind of charisma that would get anybody, make a good politician. Norm, we had Norm in our mind. He was a high school kid, elected to student body president and next thing you know he went to Cal, he graduated Cal and he's in, went to Korea, and he's back, so... but in the meantime, we got to know some of the people on the city council, and this was, I think, the key. We got to know these guys, and there was an opening and we went right to the guy and says, "What are the chances of your appointing Norm Mineta?" They say, "Well, everybody's telling..." I said, "I think we need a good person on the council and I think Norm would be good." So I.K., we, it was more I.K. 'cause he was older and we sort of gave him to speak, and he had a Japanese accent, but he was very strong. Then Norm got appointed. 'Course, a lot of people didn't like it because they think it was not, the Japanese were not that well, you might, assimilated. But he, Norm did a very good job. He was well liked by the council people, so next election he had no problem getting elected to that same position. And from there, he went to become a mayor, and when he ran for mayor he got the endorsement of many of the council people. And when he ran for Congress, he, we had to raise funds and it was, not easy, but we were able to go to all the Nikkeis, Niseis and friends that we had, and what we could do, we helped him. So that's how.

TI: That's a great story about how he got started, because it led to a pretty amazing career.

YU: Oh yeah. And we felt that there's, I always felt that you had to be politically involved and be... because during the, right after the war, not right after the war, after the war started, we had all these writers, syndicated writers, we had Henry McLemore, Westbrook Pegler, they were well known writers and they wrote, they didn't write the truth. They all wrote wrong things.

TI: Very anti-Japanese.

YU: Anti, very, very anti-Japanese. And also we had other, let's see, politicians that would get up there and say, "We have to remove them out of here. Look at what, look at this, they're saboteurs, they're surrounding all their airports." These kind of things. And they would, and they would get elected on that.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.