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| Thank you for your service, Senator Inouye. |
The longest serving U.S. Senator from the state of Hawaii has passed away. President Barack Obama was notified of the passing of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) yesterday. He was suffering complications from a lung infection.
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 then West Virginia senator Robert Byrd's death on June 28, 2010, Inouye 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.
A veteran of World War II, Senator Inouye enlisted into the military after the United States dropped its internment program in which it imprisoned Japanese Americans, on fears of espionage.
He was at the Pearl Harbor attack December 7, 1941 as a medical volunteer. In 1943, when the U.S. Army dropped its enlistment ban on Japanese Americans, Inouye curtailed his premedical studies at the University of Hawaii and enlisted in the Army. He volunteered to be part of the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This army unit was mostly made up of second-generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland.
Inouye was promoted to the rank of sergeant within his first year, and he was given the role of platoon leader. During a fire fight in Italy, Inouye was badly injured. He had his arm amputated after a severe injury during a combat fight.
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| A dedicated public servant to the constituents of Hawaii. |
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).
Due to the loss of his arm, Inouye abandoned his plans to become a surgeon, and returned to college to study political science under the G.I. 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 vote—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, 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."
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.
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| President Barack Obama with Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). |
In 2009, Inouye assumed leadership of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations after longtime chairman Robert Byrd stepped down. Following the latter's death on June 28, 2010, Inouye was elected President pro tempore, the officer third in the presidential line of succession.
In 2010, Inouye announced his decision to run for a ninth term. 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. 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."
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