Norman Mineta’s WWII internment history influenced 9/11 response

Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta faced public calls to ban Arab Americans and Muslims from flights and to detain them. Mineta’s personal history as a victim of Japanese American internment during World War II played a significant role in the George W. Bush administration’s response to the crisis.

During World War II, following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order, Mineta and approximately 110,000 other people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes and held in government detention facilities without charges. Mineta had previously shared the details of this wartime incarceration and its impact on his family with President Bush during a visit to Camp David earlier that year.