12 October 2001

Mineta Notes Acts of Friendship Toward Arab Americans

Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta says acts of discrimination against Arab Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States have been countered by "multiple acts of friendship and respect."

Speaking at the University of Rochester Annual Meliora Weekend in Rochester, New York, October 12, Mineta said the commitment that these terrorist acts not be allowed to tear apart the American community "has been echoed almost unanimously throughout the political leadership of this country."

Civil rights laws that ban discrimination on the basis of race and religion are fully in force, he said.

As an American of Japanese ancestry, Mineta said, he was scarred by the experience of being placed in a relocation camp during World War II "for no reason other than our race."

Mineta said "we can never know" if the tragedy of internment could have been avoided if President Roosevelt had taken a different step, but "we can resolve today, as Americans, that the tremendous progress we have made toward our goal of equal justice and equal opportunity for all Americans will not be sacrificed to fear."

Following is the text of Mineta's prepared remarks:

Thank you very, very much, President Jackson, for that wonderful introduction. It's a great honor for me to be here with all of you at this critical time in our Nation's history.

I would like to thank President Jackson, Dean Bartlett and the entire University staff for opening this weekend's events to the local community in order to foster a dialogue about freedom. And I would like to thank all of you for being here today.

As all of us know, this is a critical time in our Nation's history. Just over one month ago, the United States was subjected to one of the most vicious attacks we have ever suffered in our history.

Thousands of innocent men and women, from across this Nation and from around the world, were brutally murdered in New York City, Washington, D.C., and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

And in the space of just a few hours, more than 10,000 children lost one or both of their parents.

For the past month, our Nation has struggled with how to respond to this outrage.

We have come together to support the families of those who were lost.

We have come together across the political spectrum to support the effort to rebuild the communities that were damaged.

And we have come together in determination to seek out those responsible for these attacks and to bring them to justice.

It has been said that times of crisis bring out the very best in any community, and in any Nation. And that is certainly true of America today.

Many of my fellow Americans have been astonished to see our Nation's political leadership setting aside its partisan disputes, and rallying together to meet the challenge presented to us by the forces of terror.

As someone who has served in national government for most of the past three decades, including some 20 years in the United States Congress, I have to tell you that I was not at all surprised.

Our political leadership may have honest differences of opinion on some issues of public policy -- but when our fundamental way of life is attacked, and the right of people to live their lives in safety and without fear, there is no disagreement.

Crises such as this boil down political and policy debates to the most fundamental issues -- they bring a sharper focus to the question of who we are as a Nation and to the core principles we embrace as a people.

In that sense, America is being tested today -- as we have been tested every day since September 11th. That test will not stop anytime soon, and how we respond will tell us much about ourselves as a country.

We have faced similar tests in our history, and frankly there have been times when we failed those tests. It will be up to all of us in the coming months and years to make sure that this does not happen again.

As you know, more than a few journalists and historians have taken to describing September 11th as the new Pearl Harbor. The analogy is a good one -- once again, the United States has been attacked without warning and without mercy. The attack has awakened us to a danger our Nation sometimes felt we would not have to face. And it has strengthened our resolve to face that danger -- and remove it.

I think that all of you will understand that, as an American of Japanese ancestry, I find the analogy of Pearl Harbor to be particularly important. It highlights one of the greatest dangers we will face as a country during this crisis -- the danger that in looking for the enemy we may strike out against our own friends and neighbors.

On Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, my family and I attended church at the Wesley United Methodist Church in my home town of San Jose, California. And as we returned home, we heard the news that our naval base at Pearl Harbor had been bombed by the Empire of Japan.

As Americans, we were outraged by that attack. And we were fearful, as all Americans were fearful, of when the next attack might come and where it might fall.

But we had an additional cause for fear -- because we knew that many of our fellow Americans would not distinguish between us and the pilots flying the Zeroes that day in the Pacific.

Sadly, that fear turned out to be very, very real.

That same afternoon, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation began rounding up leaders in our community. And in the weeks and months that followed, we saw our status as Americans slowly but surely called into question.

After months of racial scapegoating and fear-mongering on the West Coast and across the country, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. That Executive Order authorized the United States Army to exclude all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast of the United States.

The Army orders that followed applied even to infants of one-sixteenth Japanese ancestry.

When the signs went up announcing the orders that we were to be forced from our homes and relocated to internment camps across the country, they were addressed in a way that would have made George Orwell proud:

Attention: Aliens And Non-aliens Of Japanese Ancestry.

You may be wondering what a "non-alien" is. Well, a non-alien is me: a native-born citizen of the United States of America.

The 5th Amendment to the Constitution guarantees that no American should be denied liberty or property without due process of law. But we were not acknowledged as "real" Americans -- and the effects were tragic.

We had no trials. No charges were ever brought against us. But despite that fact, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were forced from our homes in Western states, and relocated to camps in isolated locations across the country -- placed behind barbed wire, under the watchful eyes of Army personnel armed with machine guns.

Some of us remained in those camps for the duration of the war. And all of us were scarred by the experience of being rejected by our own country -- for no reason other than our race.

The internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War has rightly been called the greatest mass abrogation of civil liberties in our Nation's history -- and I believe that it stands as a warning to all of us of how dangerous misguided fear can be.

As the events of September 11th unfolded just over a month ago, I know that I was far from alone among Japanese Americans in wondering how this Nation would respond. And our greatest fear was that the backlash we had experienced would be visited on our Arab American and Muslim neighbors.

In the years that followed our internment, we fought to build a recognition that what was done to us was wrong. That it was the result of wartime hysteria, and that it resulted from a tragic failure of political leadership.

And we fought to build a national commitment that nothing like the internment would ever happen in this country -- to anyone -- ever again.

It took us almost a half-century to win that commitment with the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 -- which formally apologized and offered redress to the victims of the internment.

We knew that the events of September 11th would represent a test of the commitment we had won. And we knew that the actions of our government and of men and women across the country would tell whether that commitment would be kept.

There was good reason to worry. Over the past month, we have heard reports across the country of Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, and South Asian Americans being subjected to harassment and discrimination. We have heard reports of innocent men being murdered simply because their killers thought they looked like the enemy.

But the response of the overwhelming majority of Americans, and of our political leadership, has been very different.

I have often said that the day the Civil Liberties Act passed the House of Representatives -- September 17th, 1987, the 200th Anniversary of the Constitution of the United States -- was one of the proudest days of my life.

Over the last month, I have added several more such days to my list. Across the country, Americans from all walks of life have reached out to their Arab American and Muslim neighbors. Christians, Jews and Buddhists have stepped forward to guard mosques and Muslim congregations, and to let their neighbors know that we value their membership in our American family.

Every act of violence and discrimination has been countered by multiple acts of friendship and respect -- and a commitment that these terrorist acts will not be allowed to tear apart the American community.

That commitment has been echoed almost unanimously throughout the political leadership of this country -- embraced by the leadership in the Congress, and in states and local governments across the Nation.

But there is one moment that will always stand out in my mind -- when the President of the United States walked through the door of a mosque in Washington, D.C. to meet with Arab American and Muslim American leaders.

He told them that he understood who our enemy truly is -- an isolated group of violent extremists.

And he told them who our enemy most emphatically is not -- the millions of loyal and honorable Arab and Muslim Americans who call this Nation home, and the hundreds of millions of true followers of the Islamic faith around the world.

As a Japanese American, and as someone who lived through the terrible events of 1941 and 1942, I could not help but wonder whether history might have been different -- whether this Nation could have avoided the tragedy of the internment if President Roosevelt had taken a similar step. We can never know the answer to that question.

But we can resolve today, as Americans, that the tremendous progress we have made toward our goal of equal justice and equal opportunity for all Americans will not be sacrificed to fear.

We have built something in this country that has never before existed in the history of the world. We have built a Nation on an idea -- not on a race or religion or even a language.

We have built a Nation on the idea that all men and women are of equal worth -- and that each of us -- wherever we come from, whatever language we speak, whatever religion we practice, or whatever nation our parents called home -- are equally entitled to call ourselves Americans.

That idea is being tested today. Our political leadership has responded in the best way any of us could have hoped -- by reaffirming the ideals of equality and respect that are the foundation of this Nation.

Our civil rights laws that ban discrimination on the basis of race and religion are fully in force -- and will be fully enforced. And our national policies will not be driven by, or tolerate, racial and religious scapegoating.

But government, and the actions of government in a democratic society will ultimately respond to the beliefs and the actions of its citizens. So the story of how this Nation responds to the attacks of September 11th will not be written in Washington, D.C. It will be written by you -- and by men and women in neighborhoods, towns and cities across the country.

The rights and the principles enshrined in the Constitution of this country are the most noble in the world. They represent a promise that we, as Americans, have made to each other. And those rights and those principles are only as strong as our commitment to them.

As an American of Japanese ancestry, I know that commitment can be broken. I have seen it happen.

The terrorists who committed the atrocities of September 11th hope they can shake that commitment. They believe they can use the forces of terror and fear to make us fail our most basic principles, and to break our most sacred promises to each other.

It is my greatest hope that, in the months and years ahead, all of us will join together as Americans to make sure they do not succeed.

Thank you very much.