Much has been said about the disintegrating civility of our politics, and that as partisanship rises within both major parties, the voice of moderation and of compromise is being silenced amid so much squabbling, name-calling and grandstanding. That being so, then conditions have certainly been worsened by the passing of Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, President pro tempore of the Senate, and one of the longest-running members of Congress. He died of respiratory failure at the age of 88 in Bethesda, Maryland. His final words were, "Aloha."
Inouye was born of Japanese immigrants and was a medical volunteer at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked in 1941. When restrictions on letting Japanese-Americans serve in the military eased in 1943, Inouye put aside his medical studies and volunteered to join the all-Nisei (second-generation descendents of Japanese-American immigrants) 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The 442nd would go on to be the most decorated American unit in WWII, and Inouye himself fought in France and Italy, earning battlefield promotions to 2nd lieutenant. He saw intense combat, and was seriously wounded, losing his right arm, in a battle in Italy where his valor and fierce determination—destroying multiple enemy bunkers despite numerous serious wounds—won him the Distinguished Service Cross. Widely held suspicions that racism kept Inouye and other members of the 442nd from receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor for their bravery, and in 2000, President Clinton awarded Inouye the Medal of Honor.
After his war service, Inouye abandoned his goal of a surgical career because of his missing arm. He entered politics instead, embarking on a distinguished 58-year political career in which he never lost a single election. Inouye was a moderate whose patience and soft-spoken demeanor won him a huge amount of respect from his peers and from the public. He was considered a giant of the Senate, and was widely hailed as one of the greatest figures of modern Congressional politics, a hero on the battlefield, and a voice of conscience in the halls of government.
