Daniel Inouye

Biography

Daniel Inouye was born in Honolulu in 1924, when Hawaii was still a U.S. territory. He had begun premedical studies at the University of Hawaiʻi when he joined the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team in World War II. He was badly wounded in combat and lost his right arm, and his actions there later earned him the Medal of Honor.

Back home, he studied government and economics at the University of Hawaiʻi on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1950, and took a law degree at George Washington University in 1952. Encouraged by John A. Burns, he worked for the Democratic Party, served as an assistant public prosecutor in Honolulu, and was elected to the territorial House in the Democratic sweep of 1954 and to the territorial Senate in 1957.

When Hawaii became a state in 1959 he was elected its first member of the U.S. House, and in 1962 he won a Senate seat he held until his death. He gave the keynote speech at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, sat on the Senate Watergate Committee, chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee from 1976, and in 1987 chaired the Senate's Iran-Contra investigation. He later led the Indian Affairs, Commerce and Appropriations committees.

After Robert Byrd's death in 2010 Inouye became president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the presidential line of succession and the highest place an Asian American had then reached in it. He died in December 2012, having never lost an election, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.