Biography: Daniel Inouye
Medal of Honor

Daniel Ken Inouye was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His fathers parents, like many others, had come to Hawaii from Japan as laborers, to work on the sugar plantations. His mother, also a child of Japanese immigrants, was orphaned at an early age and later adopted by a Methodist Bishop. Daniel Inouye was raised in the Methodist faith and named for his mother's adoptive father. At the time, Hawaii was a territorial possession of the United States, but not yet a state. Political life on the islands was dominated by the white business community, particularly the sugar companies known as "the Big Five." Although the Inouye family placed a strong emphasis on education as the route to success, that route led through a school system where opportunities for Asian American students were severely limited.

After undergoing orthopedic surgery for a wrestling injury, young Daniel decided he wanted to become a surgeon himself, and planned to study medicine. In high school, he volunteered at the Red Cross Aid Station. He was 17 when Japan attacked the U.S. naval base at nearby Pearl Harbor, and as a medical aide, Inouye was among the first to treat the wounded. Even though Japanese Americans on the mainland were being interned by the U.S. government as a potential security risks, Daniel Inouye and his peers were eager to serve their country. At first the War department classified the Nisei (American-born children of Japanese immigrants) as "enemy aliens," unfit for service. But after Inouye and others petitioned the White House, the Army accepted Japanese American men for service in segregeated units. By this time, Inouye was enrolled in pre-medical studies at the University of Hawaii. As a pre-med student and an Aid Station worker, he was exempt from military service, but he quit his job and dropped out of school to join the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Inouye distinguished himself in basic training, although he struggled to reconcile the violence of war with his Christian beliefs. Within his first year, he was promoted to sergeant, and became a platoon leader. His unit participated in the brutal Rome-Arno campaign of 1944 and Inouye was shocked to learn how quickly he became accustomed to killing enemy soldiers no older than himself. After D-Day, the 442nd moved to France. Inouye distinguished himself further in combat in France; shortly after he turned 20 he was promoted to lieutenant. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in France, which included the two-week mission to rescue the "Lost Battalion" of Texans trapped behind enemy lines. He narrowly missed death in France when a bullet struck him in the chest. His life was saved by a pair of silver dollars he carried in his shirt pocket. He continued to carry them as a good luck charm when his unit returned to Italy to clear the remaining strongholds of Axis reistance.

On April 21, 1945, weeks before the fall of Berlin ended the war in Europe, Lt. Inouye realized his lucky silver dollars were missing. That day, Inouye led an assault on a heavily defended ridge known as Colle Musatello, near the town of Terenzo. Inouye's unit was pinned down by fire from three machine gun placements. An enemy bullet tore straight through Lieutenant Inouye's midsection, but he continued to lead his troops forward, hurling two hand grenades into the enemy position. Inouye had pulled the pin on a third when an enemy grenade launcher struck his right arm, severing it almost completely. Inouye's own live grenade was still clutched in the right hand over which he longer had any control. Warning his troops away, Inouye pried the grenade loose with his left hand and pitched it into the remaining machine gun nest. With his damaged arm spewing blood, he continued to lead his troops forward, firing his machine gun with his left hand until an enemy bullet struck his leg, and he lost consciousness.

When he revived, he refused evacuation until he was sure his men had secured the captured ridge. Nine hours after he was wounded, when he reached a field hospital, the doctors quickly concluded Inouye had no chance of survival, but he insisted they operate. By then he had been given so much morphine, the doctors could not give him general anesthesia without further endangering his life, so he remained conscious through the operation that followed. The surgeons saved his life, but they could not save his arm. Inouye was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism; he remained in the Army until 1947, when he was discharged with the rank of captain.

At the time, it was clear that Inouye's exploits, and those of other members of the 442nd, merited the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, but no Asian American received the award at war's end. On his return to the States, Inouye and other minority veterans were subjected to much of the same discrimination they had met before the war. Inouye committed himself to the cause of equal rights for all Americans, and for all residents of Hawaii as fully enfranchised American citizens.

The loss of his right arm had ended Inouye's dream of being a surgeon, so when he returned to the University of Hawaii he pursued studies in government and economics. He married Margaret Shinobu Awamura in 1949, while attending the university on the G.I. Bill. After graduating in 1950, he entered George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., receiving his law degree in 1952.

Returning to Hawaii, he took up the practice of law and then served as Deputy Public Prosecutor for the City of Honolulu. Inouye was already active in the Democratic Party and the movement to end the domination of state politics by the "Big Five" sugar companies. In 1954, Inouye was elected to the territorial legislature, where he served as leader of a new Democratic majority. In 1958 he was elected to the territory's Senate.

Despite fierce resistance from members of Congress who feared Hawaii's non-white majority and newly empowered unions, Hawaii was finally approved for admission to the union as the 51st state. With statehood imminent, Inouye was elected to serve as Hawaii's first U.S. Representative; he took his seat in Congress on August 21, 1959, the day Hawaii became a state. He was re-elected to a full term in the House the following year.

In 1962, Daniel Inouye was elected to a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate, where he was soon appointed to the Senate Armed Services Committee. In the years that followed, as a member of the Appropriations Committee and the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, he won a reputation as as a tireless advocate for the development of his native state. Outside of Hawaii, many Americans saw Daniel Inouye for the first time as the keynote speaker of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He achieved even greater visibility as a member of the Senate Select Committee investigating charges arising out of the Watergate affair, proceedings which led directly to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974. The daily hearings were nationally televised, and viewers across the country were impressed with Inouye's tough but fair questioning of the committee's witnesses.

The Watergate hearings and subsequent investigations had revealed serious abuses in the nation's intelligence agencies and in 1975 Senator Inouye was selected to serve as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Again, Inouye won praise for evenhandedness, as he sought to improve legislative oversight for the agencies without impairing the intelligence-gathering necessary for national security.

In 1984, Senator Inouye served as senior counsel to the Kissinger Commission, a bi-partisan panel reviewing U.S. policy in Central America. The controversies surrounding this issue soon brought Inouye in the national spotlight once again. In 1987, he was called on to chair a special Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair. The administration of President Ronald Reagan had sold arms to Iran, an ostensibly hostile government, with the apparent goal of obtaining Iranian influence to free Americans held hostage by the radical group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Funds from the sales were apparently used to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, violating an explicit congressional ban on intervention in the Nicaraguan conflict. Inouye's findings were severe, and he accused the administration of creating a secret military establishment answerable only to itself.

In the same year as the Iran-Contra hearings, Inouye asumed the chairmanship the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, seeking justice for the descendants of America's first inhabitants. Inouye was also instrumental in securing full benefits for Filipino veterans who had served in the U.S. Army in World War II, but who had long been denied the pensions and medical benefits to which they were justly entitled.

An injustice of another kind was addressed by President Bill Clinton in 2000. Although the actions of the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Battalion were widely regarded as some of the most courageous of the war, none had been recognized with the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration. After extensive review, the Distinguished Service Crosses awarded to Senator Inouye and 21 other Asian-American heroes of World War II were upgraded to full Medal of Honor status. For some, the honor came too late. Fifteen medals were awarded posthumously, but Senator Inouye and the other survivors were on hand to receive their Medals of Honor from President Clinton at the White House.

Senator Inouye affirmed his longstanding commitment to bipartisanship in 2005 when he joined a group of Senators from both parties in a mutual agreement to limit debate over judicial appointments. Inouye and his Democratic colleagues in the so-called Gang of 14 allowed long-stalled judicial appointments of President George W. Bush to come to a vote, while both sides forswore the use of the filibuster over judgeships except in extraordinary circumstances.

Maggie Inouye, the Senator's wife of 57 years, died in 2006. The couple had one son, musician Kenny Inouye. In 2008, Senator Inouye, age 84, married Irene Hirano, the CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. An accomplished administrator, she now serves as President of the U.S.-Japan Council, and Chairs the Board of Trustees of the Ford Foundation.

In 2009, Senator Inouye was appointed to chair the Senate Committee on Appropriations, widely considered the most powerful of senate committee assignments. The following year, he was elected to his ninth term in the United States Senate. After Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, he was the second-longest serving senator in the history of the body. With the death of Senator Byrd in 2010, Inouye became the Senate's senior member, and in keeping with Senate tradition was named President Pro Tempore of the Senate. This placed Senator Inouye third in line of succession to the presidency, following the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. The grandson of immigrant plantation workers, the young man who had been barred from service as an "enemy alien," had won his nation's highest honors and risen to the heights of political power.

At age 88, Senator Inouye was admitted to Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment of respiratory complications. His wife and son were by his side at the moment of his death. His office reported that his last word was "Aloha."