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TI: So describe how you then decided to go for national office to become a congressman. How did that happen?

NM: Purely by accident. In about the third week in January, 1974, quarter to six in the morning on a Sunday, the phone rings. I pick up the phone, "Hello?" "Hey Norm, have you seen the paper?" "Jimmy, it's quarter to six in the morning on Sunday," I said, "of course I haven't seen the paper." He said, "Charlie Gubser is not gonna seek reelection." Charlie Gubser was our member of Congress, had been for twenty-four years. And I said, "That's nice." "No, no, no, you've gotta run." I said, "Jimmy, I announced in September '73 that I was going to seek reelection in '74, we did a big fundraiser in October, Tom Bradley, the mayor of L.A., came up and did a fundraiser for me, and we're on our way for a reelection campaign." "No, no, no, you've got to run for Congress." I said, "Jimmy, go back to sleep, I'm going back to sleep." So I hung up on him and didn't think anything about it. Well, seven o'clock that night the doorbell rings, so I go open the door, and I look at this guy and said, "Mike, what are you doing here?" He said, "I don't know, Jim told me to be here at seven o'clock tonight." "What did he tell you?" He said, "Nothing, he just said, 'Be at Norm's at seven o'clock.'" Well, Jim, unknownst to me, invited twenty people to our house for seven o'clock Sunday night. And all these people come rapping on the door, and they all come flowing in. I'm wondering, "What's going on?" So anyway, Jim had gotten all these people together to come to the house talking about...

TI: I'm sorry, and when you say "Jim," Jim...

NM: Jim Ono was an attorney in San Jose and a close friend of mine, and he just did this on his own.

TI: Okay, so continue the story. So you have all these people...

NM: So anyway, this is 1974, and this seat had been held by the Republicans for, I don't know, forty-eight years or something like that. And the question was, can a Democrat win this congressional seat? And there was the, the Fair Housing Act of 1964 on the ballot statewide, Wilson Riles was a African American who ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction statewide and won. So the question was, if you take some of these maybe six or eight issues that had been on the ballot and sort of researched them, could we see whether or not this 13th Congressional District could be won by a Democrat? And, but in those days, it was before you were with Microsoft and computers weren't even around, so you had to go in and say, okay, Precinct 1337, how did it vote in 1964 on Proposition 14? And you take down the numbers. And you had to go through and recreate this thing over, maybe on eight issues over a twelve-year period. So we had to have lots of people go to the registrar voters to get all this information. Well, that's what we ended up discussing that night. And my protestations about, "No, no, I'm running for mayor," and they're all sitting there organizing, "All right, what other issues should we be taking a look at?" And so, I mean, these people were all enthused about me running for Congress without even me saying, "Yeah, okay, I'd consider doing it." So it took them about five weeks to do this, and they all, we all got together again and they said, "Yeah, there's a chance." And this is during the whole Watergate issue that started bubbling up in '72, '73, and this is February, by this time, February of '74, March. And so I think it was something like, maybe, I don't know, five days before the end of the declaration period, I then declared that I was going to run for Congress. And all the money I raised for mayor's race, I sent that all back to the people saying, "But I'm now going to be running for mayor, so -- I mean, Congress, so if you should feel inclined to do so, please send some money in."

TI: Well, what made you decide to run, finally?

NM: Well, in looking at the figures and talking to family, talking to friends, they just encouraged me to, to do that. And so, but it was one of those things, again, where it's not something that even crossed my mind at some point, that I would even think of running for Congress.

TI: Because it was a pretty risky thing. I mean, the mayor was probably a pretty sure thing for you to be reelected.

NM: Oh, it was. And...

TI: And here you're trying to go after a Republican seat.

NM: And the thing is that there was a very well-known Republican by the name of George Milias, very fine individual, had been a member of the state assembly, his family owned the Milias Hotel in Gilroy at the southern part of the district, and he had been appointed by President Nixon to be the regional head for the Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco. And then from there they moved him back to D.C. as Assistant Secretary of Army for Environmental Affairs. So I mean, he had a long political heritage, and so I knew it was going to be a tough race. But when you look at it, the population was mostly in the San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Los Gatos area, and went down to Gilroy. But Gilroy was also the lesser populated area. So his name recognition was much higher in that part of the district, so the whole question about who do we have to work with down in that area. And I remember one of the finds that we had was a person who used to support George Milias in other races for the state assembly. But on the congressional race, this fellow said, "I'll support you," and he was a very prominent hakujin fellow in Gilroy. And it was really a big boost when this fellow said, "Yeah, I'll support you."

TI: So how much did you win by in this election?

NM: Well, I had to get by the primary first, there were about, oh, eight or nine people in the primary. But I won the primary by, I think it was sixty... sixty-three percentage. And then in the general election, it was something like I won fifty-one percent and George got something like thirty-nine or forty, and there was a [inaudible] and some other candidates in there that made up the balance.

TI: So it was a solid win.

NM: So it was about fifty-one percent.

TI: Okay, that's good. So at the time, you were the first Japanese American elected...

NM: Mainland, mainland.

TI: Mainland. Well --

NM: Because Dan Inouye had gone to Congress in '59.

TI: That's right, in the House, that's right. Mainland Japanese American. And at that point, you were going in, Daniel Inouye was the senator along with Spark.

NM: Patsy Mink was already there.

TI: Okay, Patsy Mink was there.

NM: And Spark, Spark was there as well.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.