What was it like, as an 11-year-old boy, being uprooted and sent to Cody, Wyoming?
Norman Mineta: Well, for me originally, it was “Wow, I am going to be on an overnight train ride!” The first time for me. I remember when my mother took me up to see Fantasia in San Francisco, but here we were going to go on a really long train ride overnight from San José to Santa Anita. So as a kid, it really was much different than the impact on my dad. Towards the end of February 1941, he got his insurance license renewed. It was dated February 17th, but stamped across it was, “Suspended for the Duration of World War II.” So his business ended at that point. The impact on our elders — on my older sisters, my brother in college — was tremendous. For me, an 11-year-old kid, it was a lot different. I remember the day we left San José, to board the train… They had us all board at the freight yard, not at the passenger depot, but at the freight yard, which in a way had a good thing, because the freight yard was about five blocks from my grammar school, so a lot of the kids from the
