About Robert T. Matsui
Robert T. Matsui served in the United States House of Representatives for more than a quarter century, building a reputation for bipartisanship and substantive policy achievement.
Matsui's political career began in 1971 when he won a seat on the Sacramento City Council. After serving on the Sacramento City Council for six years Matsui was elected by his fellow council members to be Vice-Mayor of Sacramento. In 1978 during an election where Matsui was largely considered to be a longshot he won over 53 percent of the vote to defeat Republican Sandy Smoley for California's 5th district seat. Matsui was then re-elected to the 5th district seat for the next 14 terms, winning his last election in November of 2004 with 71.4 percent of the vote.
In spite of his numerous achievements, Robert T. Matsui's life did not begin in a way that seemed destined for political success. Born in Sacramento, California in 1941, just months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the lives of the Matsui family were shaped by antagonism against Japanese Americans. In March of 1942 Matsui (just six months old at the time) and his family members were sent to Pinedale Assembly Center near Fresno, California and eventually assigned to the internment camp at Tule Lake where they were held for about a year. Upon release from the camp the Matsui family moved to Idaho for work but returned to Sacramento in the spring of 1945. Though it would have been easy to allow these early negative experiences to harden him against government or his country, Matsui chose another route. As President Bill Clinton commemorated at Matsui's memorial service in Washington D.C. in 2005 Matsui worked within the system for change, "And I love knowing Bob Matsui, knowing a man who could have given in to bitterness but instead overcame it."
Web Sources:
http://www.rtmfoundation.org/aboutrtm.html
http://digital.lib.csus.edu/mats/biography.php
http://www.asianamerican.net/bios/Matsui-Robert.html
