The congressman from the 15th District is Mike Honda, a Democrat first elected in 2000. Honda’s grandparents came to the United States from Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, which served as the primary battleground for the Seinan Civil War in the 1870s (memorialized in the film The Last Samurai). Honda was born in Walnut Creek and spent 14 months during his childhood in a World War II internment camp in Colorado. His wife, Jeanne, who died of cancer in 2004, was born in Hiroshima and survived the atomic attack before immigrating to the United States several years later. Honda received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Jose State University and served two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador, where he became fluent in Spanish and gained a passion for teaching. Read More

The congressman from the 15th District is Mike Honda, a Democrat first elected in 2000. Honda’s grandparents came to the United States from Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, which served as the primary battleground for the Seinan Civil War in the 1870s (memorialized in the film The Last Samurai). Honda was born in Walnut Creek and spent 14 months during his childhood in a World War II internment camp in Colorado. His wife, Jeanne, who died of cancer in 2004, was born in Hiroshima and survived the atomic attack before immigrating to the United States several years later. Honda received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from San Jose State University and served two years in the Peace Corps in El Salvador, where he became fluent in Spanish and gained a passion for teaching.

In 1971, San Jose Mayor Norman Mineta appointed him to the city Planning Commission. Honda worked as a science teacher, and then was a principal at two area elementary schools from 1978 to 1986. During that period, he also served on the San Jose Unified School Board. He was then elected to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. In 1996, he was elected to the California Assembly, where he worked to reduce classroom sizes and increase teacher benefits.

In 2000, Republican Rep. Tom Campbell decided to run against Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. At first Honda was reluctant to run for the House, but persuasive telephone calls from several leading House Democrats and, finally, from President Clinton, changed his mind. Honda won the primary over Bill Peacock, a venture capitalist, 67% to 24%. His Republican opponent was Assemblyman Jim Cunneen, a Campbell protégé who was strongly supported by national GOP leaders and many Silicon Valley capitalists. Cunneen had liberal positions on cultural issues, and he tried to depict the contest as a referendum on the old economy versus the new. Honda, despite his close ties to unions, supported normal trade relations with China, a position strongly backed by the high-tech industry. He won 54%-42%.

Honda has been among the most liberal members of the House. He has chaired the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, which advocates for underrepresented groups on issues such as immigration. He denounced Arizona’s decision to broaden police powers to detain suspected illegal immigrants in 2010 and said centrist congressional Democrats should not fear the political consequences of tackling comprehensive immigration reform. “Leadership is not only following what constituents want, but also leading them,” he said. He helped to enact a cyber-security law that funds training and programs to protect computer data and networks. He was a major architect of the Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 to encourage the development of networked facilities, which involve the manipulation of matter at the atomic level. This has become a booming technology in the Bay Area.

On foreign policy, Honda opposed the 2009 troop surge in Afghanistan and chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ task force on that country. In 2007, with help from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he got a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. He has focused on trying to win full funding for education programs, many of which are financed at levels well below what is called for in the enabling legislation.

An important cause for Honda is eliciting apologies for past abuses from Japan, and he has publicized the cause of American POWs in World War II who were transported on “hell ships” to work as slave laborers in Japan. In 2007, Honda won House passage of a resolution calling on Tokyo to apologize for forcing as many as 200,000 women into sexual slavery during the war. His efforts have generated controversy in Japan, and The New York Times referred to Honda as “one of the most famous American congressmen in his ancestral land.” In March 2010, he rebuked Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., after Graham said Pelosi had members “liquored up on sake” to make a “suicide run” on passing a health care bill.

Another of his passions is addressing low voter turnout in national elections, a situation he calls a “serious illness.” As vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 campaign, Honda crisscrossed the nation to try to spark more participation by Asian-Americans in the election. Larry Gerston, a political scientist at San Jose State University, told the San Jose Mercury News that rather than take high-profile leadership roles, Honda prefers to put together coalitions for causes that might not otherwise get attention. “He really puts the K in ‘Kumbaya,’” Gerston said.