Daniel Inouye

Daniel Ken Inouye (born September 7 1924) is a recipient of the Medal of Honor and currently serves as the senior United States Senator from Hawaii. He has been a senator for forty-three years, a distinction which few senators have achieved, and is currently the third most senior member, after fellow Democrats Robert Byrd and Ted Kennedy. He was also the first American of Japanese descent to serve in the United States House of Representatives and later the first in the Senate. He is a member of the Democratic Party and has continuously represented Hawaii in the United States Congress since it achieved statehood in 1959.

Biography

Inouye was born in Honolulu, the son of Japanese immigrants. He grew up in a Japanese slum in Honolulu, and was at the Pearl Harbor attack as a medical volunteer. Six months later, when the Army dropped its ban on Japanese-Americans serving in the Army, he dropped his premedical studies and in 1943 he enlisted in the Army. He was assigned to the Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became one of the most highly-decorated units in the history of the U.S. Army. During the World War II campaign in Europe he received the Bronze Star and also the Distinguished Service Cross, which was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Although he lost his right arm in the war he remained in the military until 1947, discharged with the rank of captain. Due to the loss of his arm, he abandoned his plans to become a surgeon and went to college on the GI Bill. He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1950 with a B.A. in political science. He earned his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC in 1953 and was elected into Phi delta phi legal fraternity. Soon afterward he was elected to the territorial legislature, of which he was a member until shortly before HawaiVorlage:Okinai achieved statehood in 1959. He won a seat in the United States House of Representatives as Hawaii's first full member, and took office on August 21, 1959, when HawaiVorlage:Okinai became a state. He was reelected in 1960.

In 1962 he was elected to the United States Senate, succeeding fellow Democratic Sen. Oren E. Long. He has been re-elected every six years since then, most recently in 2004. He delivered the keynote address to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, noted at the time as the first person of Japanese ancestry to do so. He 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. He was a candidate for reelection to the Senate in 2004 and easily defeated his Republican opponent, Campbell Cavasso. His wife of fifty-seven years, Maggie, died on March 13, 2006.

"The Gang of 14"

On May 23, 2005, Inouye was one of fourteen moderate senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the "nuclear option". 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 Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.

Trivia

Daniel Inouye appeared as himself in The Next Karate Kid (1994).

Inouye's son Daniel Ken Inouye, Jr. was a member of 1980s hardcore punk band Marginal Man, and briefly discusses his father in the film American Hardcore.

Coincidentally, the other Senator from Hawaii is Daniel Akaka. Both Daniels were born four days apart.

Daniel Inouye met Bob Dole while they were both in Percy Jones Army Hospital, recovering from wounds suffered in World War II. Dole mentioned to Inouye while in the hospital that after the war he planned to go to Congress. Inouye beat him there by a few years. Despite being members of different political parties, the two lawmakers remain life-long friends. Percy Jones Army Hospital, later became a Federal Center and, in 2003, was renamed the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in honor of the two men and another senator who had stayed in the hospital, Philip Hart.

Since 1969, Inouye has been the only original member of any state delegation still in Congress. He was elected Hawaii's first Representative ten years before.

Inouye was the subject of an epithet during the Watergate hearings in 1973. At the time, lawyer John Wilson represented President Nixon’s closest advisers, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. During a hearing recess, Wilson referred to Inouye as "that little Jap" in a private conversation. The conversation leaked out as Mr. Wilson forgot the microphone was still on.

The following remark, appearing in the introduction of the Disclosure Project Briefing Document[1], is attributed to Senator Daniel K. Inouye: "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."

See also

• Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, housed in the Daniel K. Inouye Building

External links

• Daniel Inouye's official U.S. Senate homepage
• Voting record maintained by the Washington Post
• 21 Asian American World War II Vets to Get Medal of Honor