Mineta speaks out at CAAMFest
Norm Mineta isn’t one of those film festival guests of honor who sneak out to explore neighborhood bars during the screening of their film. He sat through all of “An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy” at the Thursday, May 10, opening of the two-week CAAMFest at the Castro Theatre.
This was the first chance for the former San Jose mayor, congressman and Cabinet member to see the completed documentary, and he and his wife, Danealia, were an attentive audience. “It’s such an honor,” she whispered afterward.
His life in politics, skillfully captured by director Dianne Fukami, stands in stark contrast to the current White House occupant. As a 10-term U.S. representative from Silicon Valley, Mineta kept his ego in check while passing seminal legislation, notably a bill granting reparations to Japanese Americans like his family who were incarcerated during World War II. His motto was “If you don’t care who gets the credit, you can do many things.”
Mineta’s one piece of advice for President Trump: “He would be better off if he had bigger ears and a smaller mouth.” He recalled a time when Congress members on both sides of the aisle put in long hours at productive committee meetings. “We would fight but then slap each other on the back and say, ‘Come on, let’s go have a drink,’ ” he said earlier in the day.
The same cordiality was present when Mineta served as secretary of transportation, the only Democrat in President George W. Bush’s Cabinet. “I was afraid of being marginalized, but that never happened,” Mineta said. “I would regularly have dinner with the other secretaries, and we got to be good friends.” He believes this goodwill was possible because “we didn’t have a president second-guessing our every decision. President Bush let us do our job, not like that big bag of ego now in the White House. I am so glad I’m not in politics now.”
At a Q&A after the screening, producer Debra Nakatomi said that when she and Fukami began working on their documentary in 2014, President Barack Obama was in office, and it appeared that the first female president would follow him. “But when things shifted so dramatically we realized the story of Norman Mineta was more important than ever,” she said.
At a festive party afterward at the Asian Art Museum, several people in their 20s admitted they were familiar with Mineta mostly from the San Jose airport named for him. “I feel like I should know more about him. He definitely was not taught in the schools I went to,” said Thuy Tran, a 29-year-old associate producer at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center.
Another partygoer, Alexander Bocchieri, learned about Mineta from researching his own film, “Go for Broke,” (playing at CAAM SundayMonday, May 13-14). It tells the rousing story of the 442nd military unit, consisting entirely of young Japanese American men, which became the most highly decorated unit in U.S. history.
“Secretary Mineta was so inspired by these men who fought despite the discrimination they faced that he named his reparations bill HR442 for them,” Bocchieri said.
Filmmaker Ellen Spiro arrived at the party with Jessica Jin, the University of Texas student who is the subject of Spiro’s short film “Come and Take It” (playing Sunday, May 13). After learning of a Texas law allowing students to openly carry loaded guns into classrooms, Jin, upon checking, found that it was, however, illegal to openly brandish a dildo.
“Jin created a huge media sensation when she pointed out the absurdity of the two laws on Facebook,” Spiro said. What started out as sort of a joke became much more when San Francisco sex toy companies sent thousands of dildos to be displayed during a protest.
“Our film shows how Jin went from being a prankster to becoming politically involved,” Spiro said. Undoubtedly Mineta, whose work now consists of inspiring young people to be politically active, would approve.
“President Bush let us do our job, not like
that big bag of ego now in the White House.
I am so glad I’m not in politics now.”
Norm Mineta, former San Jose mayor and federal secretary of transportation