August 28, 2020
Daniel Inouye
Life of an American Hero
By Philip Chin
By the end of his life in 2012, Daniel Ken Inouye was President pro tempore of the United States Senate, third in line in presidential succession just after the Speaker of the House of Representatives. His life inspired many minorities to enter politics. His appearance on television during the Watergate hearings in 1974 was seen by a young Barack Obama during a family vacation, “It hinted to me what might be possible in my own life,” said President Obama in his eulogy to Senator Inouye, “I learned how our democracy is supposed to work.”
“Were it not for those two insights planted in my head at the age of 11, in between Disneyland and a trip to Yellowstone, I might never have considered a career in public service. I might not be standing here today. I think it’s fair to say that Danny Inouye was perhaps my earliest political inspiration.”
Daniel Inouye was born on September 7, 1924 in Honolulu, in the US Territory of Hawaii. His father, Hyataro Inouye, held two full time jobs to help support his extended family until he survived a heart attack. As a result of immigration Asian Americans made up a majority 3/4 of the population. Because of this there was more equality in Hawaii than on the mainland, but the highest social and political circles in Hawaii remained segregated.
As a child Daniel Inouye once asked his mother, Kame Imanaga Inouye, if he would ever be able to marry the daughter of the Emperor of Japan. His mother replied with the words that would influence him for the rest of his life.
"No one is too good for you," she paused, then continued, "but remember— you are no better than anyone else, either."
The strong belief in equality that his mother had imbued in him was shown in high school when he was nominated to join two academic honor societies because of his achievements. The students in these groups dressed in white shirts, neckties, and polished shoes to show their elite status. Ordinary students wore a plain sports shirt and denim pants. Inouye was questioned as to his choice in clothes, for not wearing the requisite uniform, and for his choice of friends, who were poor and weren't part of the academic elite. Inouye angrily defended his friends and ended up refusing to join.
By December 7, 1941, Daniel Inouye was a junior in high school with ambitions to become a surgeon. On that day the forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked American bases all across Oahu. When he saw the Japanese insignia on the attacking planes he felt his life had changed for the worse but he soon began helping wounded civilians and collecting the dead. He worked for five days straight at an aid station. From then on he attended high school in the mornings then worked as a medical aide throughout the night.
Daniel Inouye was among many Americans that volunteered to join the military. Despite the American citizenship that Inouye and most young Japanese Americans had been born with they were turned down. The War Department had decided to classify all Japanese Americans as 4C "enemy aliens," ineligible to join the military.
In the 2007 PBS documentary, "The War," Inouye told filmmaker Ken Burns how he felt at the time, "I was angered to realize that my government felt that I was disloyal and part of the enemy, and I wanted to be able to demonstrate not only to my government but to my neighbors that I was a good American."
It was in his senior year in high school in 1942 that he finally accepted a renewed invitation to join the academic honor societies that he'd rejected previously. He'd won the first prize in Hawaii and an honorable mention nationally for an article he'd written for Scholastic Magazine. In the article he detailed his experiences as a Japanese American in Hawaii during the attack on Pearl Harbor helping the wounded and finding the dead and his shock and anger about the attack. There were more important things to worry about now than white shirts, ties, and polished shoes.
The ban against Japanese American recruitment was rescinded in 1943 and a unit was formed around a nucleus of Japanese American members of the ROTC program at the University of Hawaii and the Hawaii National Guard, to form the 100th Infantry Battalion. They fought in Italy in 1943 and were eventually joined by Hawaiian and mainland internment camp volunteers and draftees to become the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in 1944. Among the Hawaiian volunteers was Daniel Inouye who'd dropped out of pre-med studies at the University of Hawaii to enlist.
When it came time to leave for the military his father took the day off to accompany him to the departure point and said, "This country has been good to you. If it means you must give your life for it, so be it, but do so with honor." Then he said "Whatever you do, do not dishonor the family or the country."
The 100th and then the 442nd soon developed a reputation as an elite and dedicated unit. They were thrown from Italy to France and then back again to perform impossible missions that other units couldn't. Their casualty rates were horrendous. In October 1944, the 442nd had already been decimated after constant fighting for nine days in the Vosges Mountains of France. They were then ordered to rescue a battalion of the 36th Infantry Division (The Texas Division) that had become trapped behind enemy lines. Sergeant Daniel Inouye was summoned back to regimental headquarters to receive a battlefield commission to second lieutenant and missed the last two days of the successful battle. He returned to find that his platoon only had 10 men left out of a normal strength of around 50. The entire 100th/442nd, which had started with almost 3,000 soldiers, was reduced to around 800 in just three weeks.
After being brought back up to strength, most of the 442nd was sent back to Italy and attached to the 92nd Infantry Division, "Buffalo Soldiers." The all African American division had been annihilated after their white commander had thrown them into repeated battles against strong German/Italian positions unsupported by tanks, artillery, or other American units to prove that African American soldiers had no place in the United States Army. The division had been reduced to the size of a regiment and the 442nd and a white infantry regiment were assigned to bring up their numbers and help restore their shattered morale.
The 92nd Division was assigned to attack the Gothic Line fortifications in the Apennine Mountains, featuring some of the most rugged terrain in the mountains of Italy. They succeeded and were pushing up the boot of Italy in the closing days of the war when Inouye was badly wounded. His citation for the Distinguished Service Cross, which was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor in 1996, read:
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 sniper’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 Inouye’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.
Inouye said that he'd been beyond the pain threshold and hadn't really been conscious of what he was doing after a certain point. In 2010 he said, "You don't really earn a Purple Heart. The enemy shoots you — you try to avoid it." The Medal of Honor, he continued, "was temporary insanity. I look at the citation and I say, 'No, I couldn't have done that.'"
The remaining part of Inouye's right arm was amputated at the hospital without anesthesia because he had so little blood left in him that it was feared that the anesthesia would lower his blood pressure to the point that he would die. The seventeen transfusions of blood he was given had all been donated by African American soldiers. Inouye credited his later fight on behalf of civil rights for African Americans to the gratitude he felt for the blood donations that had saved his life and to the African American soldiers that had carried him down from the mountain.
He was sent to recover in an army hospital in Michigan where he met a fellow veteran with a battle crippled right arm, Robert "Bob" Dole from Kansas, and another veteran who'd also been wounded in the arm, Philip Hart from Michigan. With his future career as a surgeon permanently shattered with the amputation of his arm, Inouye listened to Dole as he described his ambition to enter politics and run for Congress. He decided that was a good idea for himself as well and would later joke that he'd followed the "Dole Plan" to Congress. Bob Dole would be elected to the US Senate in 1968, nearly a decade after Inouye had entered Congress. All three friends would serve as United States Senators representing their respective states.
On May 27, 1947, after 20 months of recovery, Inouye was honorably discharged with the rank of captain with the Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts. Still in uniform and with his empty right sleeve pinned up he crossed the country on his way home to Hawaii where he stopped at a barber shop in San Francisco for a haircut and was told, "You're a Jap. We don't cut Jap hair."
Inouye thought, "We ought to have every single right that every other American has. Why is this denied us?" The experience made him more set than ever to become a politician to fight against such prejudice and discrimination.
He used the GI Bill to pay for a college education and graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1950 with a Bachelor of Arts in economics and political science and then earned his law degree from George Washington University Law School in 1952. He worked as an assistant public prosecutor in Honolulu for a year then went into private practice. As a distinguished war hero he received the backing of the Democratic Party of Hawaii and was elected to the Hawaiian Territorial House of Representatives in 1954 Daniel Inouye immediately became the majority leader. He served two terms and was then elected to the Hawaiian Territorial Senate in 1957.
When Hawaii became a state in 1959, Daniel Inouye was elected with 70% of the vote to hold Hawaii's single House of Representatives seat in the United States Congress, becoming the first Japanese American in Congress joining Hiram Fong, the first Chinese American elected to the United States Senate to represent Hawaii. Inouye was reelected in 1960 and was then elected to the United States Senate in 1962.
Senator Inouye gained some fame by being the keynote speaker at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, a first for any Asian American, but truly shot to national fame during the Watergate hearings in 1973-1974. People working with the campaign to reelect President Richard Nixon were caught breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee. Millions of television viewers saw Inouye questioning White House aides, including H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman as well as Nixon campaign director and former Attorney General of the United States, John Mitchell. It was a shock for many Americans to see an Asian American questioning the most powerful white Americans in the country.
Inouye received thousands of telegrams and letters of support, about 80% of these were positive, the rest contained racial slurs and threats. The racism outraged Senator Warren Rudman, a Republican who took to the Senate floor to denounce the racist attacks and was also widely featured across the country on television. Inouye said, "I was touched by Warren when he got so moved by the ethnic slurs. But I've gone through this. It's part of life. If you can't take it, you have no business around here. Racial discrimination will be with us for a long, long time, and we should recognize the evil of it. I think most Americans do."
In the wake of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon and revelations about the misdeeds of American intelligence agencies that had been revealed, Senator Inouye was appointed as chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 1975 and tasked with reforming the CIA and the other organs of American intelligence to make them comply with the law. He held this position until 1979.
In 1987 he was appointed as chairman of the Senate committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair. President Ronald Reagan and officials at the National Security Council had pursued complicated negotiations with the Iranian government regarding American hostages held in Lebanon by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization. Weapons were shipped to Iran to influence negotiations and the Iranian payments were diverted to fund Contra rebels fighting against the government of Nicaragua, a Soviet ally, bypassing Congressional oversight and funding restrictions. Inouye's prominent role in the televised hearings again brought him national attention, especially his hard questioning of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who'd led the NSC operation. North not only admitted to lying to Congress and destroying critical documents while being investigated but also stated he was proud to have done so in service to his country.
"It was painful to all of us to sit here and listen to your testimony. It was equally painful that you lied and misled for what you believed to be a good cause," Inouye responded.
In 1993, an investigation was started by the Department of the Army. It determined that racism had been involved in the downgrading of some medals for minorities into lesser award recommendations during World War II. Among the few honorees still alive to receive their Medal of Honor from President Clinton in 2000 was Daniel Inouye.
In 2009, Inouye became chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations that determines how funding is allocated by the United States Government. In 2010, as the most senior surviving senator, he was elected President pro tempore and became third in the line of presidential succession.
After he died on December 17, 2012 Senator Inouye was honored with a lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol Building, only the 29th American to be so honored since the practice started in 1852, and the first Asian American.
"Everyone in the Senate not only admired Danny Inouye, but they trusted him," Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement. "We all knew he would do the moral thing regardless of the consequences — whether it was passing judgment on a president during Watergate or on another president in the Iran-Contra hearings. And Danny always remembered where he came from — and how hard his family had to struggle."
Internet Sources
The National WWII Museum Interview with Senator Inouye
Asian Media Group's Gold Sea Website
Book Sources
Stanley Hayami: Nisei Son by Joanne Oppenheim
Japanese American Journey: The Story of a People by AACP
Copyright © 2020 by AACP, Inc.