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Daniel Inouye

President pro tempore of the United States Senate
In office June 28, 2010Â â€" December 17, 2012
President	Barack Obama
Leader	Harry Reid
Preceded by	Robert Byrd
Succeeded by	Patrick Leahy
United States Senator from Hawaii
In office January 3, 1963Â â€" December 17, 2012
Preceded by	Oren Long
Succeeded by	vacant
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Hawaii's At-large district
In office August 21, 1959Â â€" January 3, 1963
Preceded by	John Burns (Delegate)
Succeeded by	Thomas Gill
Personal details
Born	Daniel Ken Inouye September 7, 1924 Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Died	December 17, 2012 (agedÂ 88) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S.
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Maggie Shinobu Awamura (1949â€"2006) Irene Hirano (2008â€"2012)
Children	Ken Inouye
Alma mater	University of Hawaii, Manoa George Washington University
Religion	Methodist
Signature
Website	Senate website
Military service
Allegiance	Â United States
Service/branch	United States Army
Years of service	1943â€"1947
Rank	Captain
Unit	442nd Regimental Combat Team
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Medal of Honor Bronze Star Medal Purple Heart European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal

Daniel Ken "Dan" Inouye (pronounced /É¨ËˆnoÊŠweÉª/;^[1] September 7, 1924 â€" December 17, 2012) was a United States Senator from Hawaii, a member of the Democratic Party, and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate from 2010 until his death in 2012,^[2] making him the highest-ranking Asian American politician in U.S. history.^[3] Inouye was the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Appropriations.

A senator since 1963, Inouye was the most senior senator at the time of his death. He was also the second longest serving U.S. Senator in history after Robert Byrd. Inouye continuously represented Hawaii in the U.S. Congress since it achieved statehood in 1959 until the time of his death, serving as Hawaii's first U.S. Representative and later a senator. Inouye was the first Japanese-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and later the first in the U.S. Senate. Before then, he served in the Hawaii territorial house from 1954 to 1958 and the territorial senate from 1958 to 1959. He never lost an election in 58 years as an elected official. At the time of his death, Inouye was the second-oldest current U.S. senator, after Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. He was also a World War II Medal of Honor recipient.

Because of his seniority, following Senator Byrd's death on June 28, 2010, he became President pro tempore of the Senate; this made him third in the presidential line of succession after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Early life

Inouye was born on September 7, 1924, in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of Kame (nÃ©e Imanaga) and Hyotaro Inouye.^[4] He was a Nisei Japanese-American, as the son of a Japanese immigrant father and a mother whose parents had also immigrated from Japan. He grew up in the Bingham Tract, a Chinese-American enclave within the predominantly Japanese-American community of MÅÊ»iliÊ»ili in Honolulu. He graduated from Honolulu's President William McKinley High School.

Military service (1941â€"1947)

Inouye was at the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 as a medical volunteer.^[5]

In 1943, when the U.S. Army dropped its ban on Japanese-Americans, Inouye curtailed his premedical studies at the University of Hawaii and enlisted in the Army.^[5] He volunteered to be part of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.^[6] This army unit was mostly made up of second-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland.^[7]

Inouye was promoted to the rank of sergeant within his first year, and he was given the role of platoon leader. He served in Italy in 1944 during the Rome-Arno Campaign before his regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France, where he spent two weeks in the battle to relieve the Lost Battalion, a battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment that was surrounded by German forces. He was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant for his actions there. At one point while he was leading an attack, a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart, but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket.^[8] He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charms until he lost them shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm.^[9]

Inouye as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army

On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily-defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany, Italy called Colle Musatello. The ridge served as a strongpoint along the strip of German fortifications known as the Gothic Line, which represented the last and most dogged line of German defensive works in Italy. As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver, three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions just 40 yards away, pinning his men to the ground. Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach; ignoring his wound, he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenades and fire from his Thompson submachine gun. After being informed of the severity of his wound by his platoon sergeant, he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position, which he also successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss.

As his squad distracted the third machine gunner, Inouye crawled toward the final bunker, eventually drawing within 10 yards. As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade into the fighting position, a German inside fired a rifle grenade that struck him on the right elbow, severing most of his arm and leaving his own primed grenade reflexively "clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore".^[10] Inouye's horrified soldiers moved to his aid, but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade. As the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle, Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left. As the German aimed his rifle to finish him off, Inouye tossed the grenade off-hand into the bunker and destroyed it. He stumbled to his feet and continued forward, silencing the last German resistance with a one-handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge. When he awoke to see the concerned men of his platoon hovering over him, his only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them to return to their positions, since, as he pointed out, "nobody called off the war!"^[11]

The remainder of Inouye's mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia, as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him.^[12]

Although Inouye had lost his right arm, he remained in the military until 1947 and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain. At the time of his leaving of the Army, he was a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart. Inouye was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery in this action, with the award later being upgraded to the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton (alongside 19 other Nisei servicemen who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were believed to have been denied proper recognition of their bravery due to their race).^[13] His story, along with interviews with him about the war as a whole, were featured prominently in the 2007 Ken Burns documentary The War.^[14]

While recovering from war wounds and the amputation of his right forearm from the grenade wound (mentioned above) at Percy Jones Army Hospital, Inouye met future Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, then a fellow patient. While at the same hospital, Inouye also met future fellow Democrat and Senator Philip Hart, who had been injured during D-Day. Dole mentioned to Inouye that after the war he planned to go to Congress; Inouye beat him there by a few years. The two remained lifelong friends. In 2003, the hospital was renamed the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in honor of the three WWII veterans.

Congressional career

Due to the loss of his arm, Inouye abandoned his plans to become a surgeon,^[5] and returned to college to study political science under the GI Bill. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1950 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. He earned his law degree from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C. in 1953 and was elected into the Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. In 1953, he was elected to the Hawaii territorial House of Representatives, and was immediately elected majority leader. He served two terms there, and was elected to the Hawaii territorial senate in 1957.

Midway through his first term in the state senate, Hawaii achieved statehood. He won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as Hawaii's first full member, and took office on August 21, 1959, the same date Hawaii became a state; he was re-elected in 1960.

In 1962, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, succeeding fellow Democrat Oren E. Long. He was reelected eight times, usually without serious difficulty. His only close race was in 1992, when state senator Rick Reed held him to 57 percent of the voteâ€"the only time he received less than 69 percent of the vote. He delivered the keynote address at the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago,^[5] and gained national attention for his service on the Senate Watergate Committee. He was chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975 until 1979, and chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs from 1987 until 1995 and from 2001 until 2003. Inouye was also involved in the Iran-Contra investigations of the 1980s, chairing a special committee from 1987 until 1989. During the hearings Inouye referred to the operations that had been revealed as a "secret government" saying:

"[There exists] a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself."^[15]

Criticizing the logic of Marine Lt. Colonel Oliver North's justifications for his actions in the affair, Inouye made reference to the Nuremberg trials, provoking a heated interruption from North's attorney Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr., an exchange that was widely repeated in the media at the time. He was also seen as a pro-Taiwan senator, and helped in forming the Taiwan Relations Act.

In 2009, Inouye assumed leadership of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations after longtime chairman Robert Byrd stepped down.

In 2010, Inouye announced his decision to run for a ninth term.^[16] He easily won the Democratic primary--the real contest in this heavily Democratic state--and then trounced Republican state representative Campbell Cavasso with 74 percent of the vote.

Prior to his death, Inouye announced that he planned to run for a record tenth term in 2016, when he would have been 92 years old.^[17]^[18] He also said, "I have told my staff and I have told my family that when the time comes, when you question my sanity or question my ability to do things physically or mentally, I don't want you to hesitate, do everything to get me out of here, because I want to make certain the people of Hawaii get the best representation possible."^[19]

Gang of 14

Main article: Gang of 14

On May 23, 2005, Inouye was a member of a bipartisan group of fourteen moderate senators,^{[citation needed]} known as the Gang of 14, to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the "nuclear option",^{[citation needed]} a means of forcibly ending a filibuster. Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance", and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William H. Pryor, Jr.) would receive a vote by the full U.S. Senate.^{[citation needed]}

Committee assignments

Party leadership

Senate Democratic Steering and Coordination Committee
United States Senate President Pro Tempore (on June 28, 2010, after the death of then-President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd)

Caucuses

Electoral history

Main article: Electoral history of Daniel Inouye

Family

Inouye's wife of 57 years, Maggie, died of cancer on March 13, 2006. On May 24, 2008, he married Irene Hirano in a private ceremony in Beverly Hills, California. Ms. Hirano was president and founding chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, California. She resigned the position at the time of her marriage in order to be closer to her husband. According to the Honolulu Advertiser, she is 24 years younger than Inouye. On May 27, 2010, Ms. Hirano was elected by the board to chair the nation's second largest non-profit The Ford Foundation.^[20] Inouye's son Kenny was the guitarist for influential D.C. hardcore punk band Marginal Man.^[21]

Honors and decorations

On June 21, 2000, Inouye was presented the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton for his service during World War II (In 2007, Inouye was personally inducted as a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by President of France Nicolas Sarkozy; all living veterans of WW II who served in France are eligible to receive the Legion of Honor military award from France).

Also in 2000, Inouye was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun by the Emperor of Japan, in recognition of his long and distinguished career in public service.^[22]

In 2006, the U S Navy Memorial awarded Inouye its Naval Heritage award for his support of the U S Navy and the military during his terms in the Senate.

In February 2009, a bill was filed in the Philippine House of Representatives by Rep. Antonio Diaz seeking to confer honorary Filipino citizenship on Inouye, Senators Ted Stevens and Daniel Akaka and Representative Bob Filner, for their role in securing the passage of benefits for Filipino World War II veterans.^[23]

In June 2011, Inouye was appointed a Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers, the highest Japanese honor which may be conferred upon a foreigner who is not a head of state. Only the seventh American to be so honored, he is also the first American of Japanese descent to receive it. The conferment of the order was "to recognize his continued significant and unprecedented contributions to the enhancement of goodwill and understanding between Japan and the United States."^[24]

Military awards and decorations

On May 27, 1947, he was honorably discharged and returned home as a Captain with a Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star Medal, 2 Purple Hearts, and 12 other medals and citations. In 2000, his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.^[25]^[26]^[27]

Combat Infantryman Badge
1st Row	Medal of Honor	Bronze Star Medal		Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster
2nd Row	European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal		World War II Victory Medal		Chief Commander of the Philippine Legion of Honor
3rd Row	Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun		Chevalier of the LÃ©gion d'honneur		Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers

Medal of Honor citation

President Clinton presenting the Medal of Honor to Senator Inouye on June 21, 2000

Citation:

Second Lieutenant Daniel K. Inouye distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 21 April 1945, in the vicinity of San Terenzo, Italy. While attacking a defended ridge guarding an important road junction, Second Lieutenant Inouye skillfully directed his platoon through a hail of automatic weapon and small arms fire, in a swift enveloping movement that resulted in the capture of an artillery and mortar post and brought his men to within 40 yards of the hostile force. Emplaced in bunkers and rock formations, the enemy halted the advance with crossfire from three machine guns. With complete disregard for his personal safety, Second Lieutenant Inouye crawled up the treacherous slope to within five yards of the nearest machine gun and hurled two grenades, destroying the emplacement. Before the enemy could retaliate, he stood up and neutralized a second machine gun nest. Although wounded by a sniperâ€™s bullet, he continued to engage other hostile positions at close range until an exploding grenade shattered his right arm. Despite the intense pain, he refused evacuation and continued to direct his platoon until enemy resistance was broken and his men were again deployed in defensive positions. In the attack, 25 enemy soldiers were killed and eight others captured. By his gallant, aggressive tactics and by his indomitable leadership, Second Lieutenant Inouye enabled his platoon to advance through formidable resistance, and was instrumental in the capture of the ridge. Second Lieutenant Inouyeâ€™s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the United States Army.

Death

In 2012 Inouye began using a wheelchair in the Senate to preserve his knees, and received an oxygen concentrator to aid his breathing. In November of that year he suffered a minor cut after falling in his apartment and was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.^[28] On December 6, 2012, he was again hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital so doctors could further regulate his oxygen intake, and was transferred to Walter Reed on December 10, where he issued a statement saying "For the most part, I am OK."^[29] He died there of respiratory complications seven days later on December 17, 2012.^[30] According to the senator's Congressional web site, his last word was "Aloha".^[31]

Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, announced Inouye's death on the floor of the Senate, referring to Inouye as "certainly one of the giants of the Senate." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referred t

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The Badass Story Behind Sen. Inouye's Medal Of Honor