The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, Norman Mineta was 10 years old. His father had immigrated from Japan at 14, settled in California, and started a family and an insurance agency. After the attack, Norman’s father assured him and his siblings that they were American citizens and safe from whatever might happen next. However, six weeks after Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, armed troops arrived at Norman’s door, and he and his family were forced to “evacuate.” Many Japanese American families had to leave everything behind or sell their belongings “for a pittance.” Japanese bank accounts were frozen, Norman’s father’s insurance license was suspended, and Norman was forced to leave his beloved dog behind.

Norman’s parents wore “their nicest clothes” on the train to the first concentration camp and “remained calm and cooperative to demonstrate their loyalty to America” (201). The 16-hour train ride deposited the family at the Santa Anita racetrack, which had been transformed into a makeshift prison camp. They spent months living at Santa Anita before they boarded another train and were taken to Heart Mountain near Cody, Wyoming. Heart Mountain was home to more than 14,000 people and functioned “like a small city” (202).

One day, a local scoutmaster brought his Boy Scout troop to visit the imprisoned children. The boys set up camp together, shoveling moats around their tents to divert water if it rained. Norman’s tentmate wanted to dig their moat so that any water would flood the tent of another camper he didn’t like. Norman agreed, and the rain that night swept the other boy’s tent away. The boys bonded over this “shared peskiness” and became friends. As the war neared its end, Norman and his family were finally released and moved to Illinois. Norman graduated college and joined the military, where he fought in the Korean War and lost touch with his friend.

After high school, Daniel was eager to join the military. However, Japanese Americans were unable to enroll, and Daniel’s draft status showed him to be “an enemy alien.” Instead, Daniel decided to pursue medical school. Japanese Americans in Hawaii were mostly spared from imprisonment, but they were still subject to harassment and abuse. One day, for example, troops came to Daniel’s house and destroyed his father’s new short-wave radio.

After repeated petitioning, President Roosevelt agreed to allow Japanese Americans to serve in a segregated military unit. Eighty percent of eligible Japanese Americans volunteered, and a troop of young men was sent to Europe. In Italy, Daniel was “stunned” by the destruction and suffering that confronted him. Starving Italians were eating out of garbage cans, and Daniel quickly organized his unit to donate all their spare food to the locals. Daniel fought in a number of battles and had a wartime commission by the time he was 20. On April 20, 1945, Daniel and his unit learned that President Roosevelt, their commander-in-chief, had died. The men were exhausted, but they were determined to honor the dead president and proceeded with their assignment to take a mountain held by the Axis powers.

The unit set off toward the mountain, lobbing grenades at the German troops they encountered. They made smooth progress and soon arrived at the mountain, where three German machine guns were perched. There was no cover, but Daniel took four grenades and ran. He threw three grenades into the cluster of Nazi troops, but he was also shot by the machine gun fire. There was just one more gun to take out, and Daniel pulled the pin in the last grenade. However, at that moment, he heard an explosion. One of the German soldiers had fired his rifle and nearly blown Daniel’s right arm from his body. His right hand still held the grenade, which would explode in a matter of moments, so Daniel seized it with his other hand and flung it at the Nazis. He yelled at his companions to keep fighting, and he waited alone for help. Daniel pinched an artery in his ruined arm to avoid bleeding to death and waited for nine hours to be taken to the hospital. At the hospital, wounded soldiers were sorted into three categories depending on the severity of their injuries. Daniel was placed with the dying men, and the chaplain came to see him. However, Daniel wasn’t ready to die. The chaplain saw his will to live, and he was immediately wheeled into surgery. He was given 17 units of blood, much of which was donated by the all-Black unit of soldiers serving nearby.

Daniel needed intensive rehabilitation, but he recovered and completed law school. He returned to Hawaii, got married, and started a political career. He was elected to Congress and became one of Hawaii’s first senators.

Once Japanese Americans were released from the incarceration camps, they spread out across the county and devoted themselves to being “110 percent American” to combat the stigma of the camps. Nevertheless, they faced discrimination. When Norman finished his military service, for example, he struggled to find a landlord who would rent to him. Norman began working in insurance with his father, but he longed to work in politics. He began with a place on the San Jose city council and was eventually elected mayor, a huge feat for an Asian American man at the time.

After becoming mayor, Norman received a letter from Alan Simpson, his long-lost Boy Scout friend. Alan had become “a proper juvenile delinquent” as a teenager and eventually ended up in jail (215). This was “a wake-up call” for the young man, and he committed to self-improvement. He served in the military and became an attorney back in Wyoming. Alan’s father was a politician, and soon, Alan and Norman were reunited in Washington as congressmen. The two were opposites in appearance and ideology. Norman was an immigrant’s son and a liberal Democrat, while Alan was a conservative Wyoming “cowboy.” However, the men were close friends and never stopped laughing and joking when they were together.

Norman, Daniel, and other Asian American members of Congress proposed a bill called the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to “make amends” with the Japanese American community after the injustices they had suffered. The bill called for $20,000 for every survivor of the concentration camps, a seemingly “impossible ask.” However, the bill had a great deal of support, including from Norman’s friend Alan, and it was passed and signed into law.

Norman served 10 terms in Congress and was offered positions in the cabinets of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He was serving in the Bush administration when planes struck the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Immediately, Norman understood that people of Middle Eastern heritage would face the same discrimination that he and his family had struggled with after the Pearl Harbor attacks. He was instrumental in shaping President Bush’s response to the attacks to ensure that people were not racially profiled.

Daniel died in 2012 as one of the longest-serving US senators in history. His funeral was attended by then-Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama, who was a child in Hawaii when Daniel became a senator. He was buried back in Hawaii, where he was honored with jet planes, a 19-cannon salute, and a bagpipe corps.

Norman died in 2022 and remained friends with Alan throughout his life. He believed that “compromise” should not be seen “as a weakness, rather […] a strength to get something done” (222). McMahon argues that history remembers not “the cynics” but “the people who spent their lives in service to others,” fighting “for justice for someone whose reflection they don’t see in the mirror” (222).