A Mentor

Yesterday our class had one of the best, if not the best, speaker we've had so far. The Honorable Norman Mineta, former Secretary of Transportation (Bush) and former Secretary of Commerce (Clinton). Aside from these titles he was also held in a Japanese Internment Camp during WWII! He told us the story of his father's journey from Japan because as the second son, he had no inheritance and decided to, at age 14, make the journey to America, speaking no English and with no money!
He worked his way down the west coast until he made it to southern California where he eventually set up an insurance company. His son, Norman, began to work with him in the family business until he was asked to fill a vacated City Council seat. From there he became a Congressman and then went on to fill the positions listed above.

He is a truly amazing man with a truly amazing story. What I left out above was the time, as a young boy, when he and his family were put in an internment camp during WWII and all of their possessions (aside from what they could carry) were taken away and their insurance business destroyed. These experiences shaped his work, especially after 9/11 when he was drafting policy which would require airline security to be made uniform around the country. The first requirement was that officers would engage in no racial profiling of any kind. Whether or not all officers do abide by that, they are given special training in order to avoid the behavior.

The most impressive story he told was about his experiences on 9/11. He was in a meeting when an assistant told him that a plane had struck one of the towers of the World Trade Center. He went into his office and there witnessed the second plane. He said that he has learned that when something happens once, it's an accident, when it happens twice it's a trend, and when it happens a three times, it's a planned action.

He got the call to come to the White House and when he arrived he noticed that everyone was leaving while he was entering. He was taken down into the intelligence center of the White House where he was given access to all the information about planes in the air. He described the moments during which someone he was on the phone with described the movements of one plane as it headed toward D.C. As it came within miles of the capitol, it was lost on the radar and moments later was crashed into the Pentagon. He then gave the order to ground all planes and within two and half hours, more than 4,000 planes were taken out of the air, and all international flights were rerouted to Canada.

This was an amazing man with an amazing story and definitely one of the best speakers we've had!