“Aloha,” Friend.
“Alaska’s 3rd Senator” has died.
First elected in 1962, Hawaii’s Daniel Inouye (D) was a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient and the nation’s longest serving senator.
He was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and also, previously, of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee for many years. In both capacities, he was a friend to Alaska. He and Uncle Ted were very close, and below are his remarks at the Stevens funeral in Anchorage four years ago.
Fare thee well, friend. May the sunny skies and the ocean blue of your home surround you.
Aloha.
People don’t realize what they have lost. Hawaii and Alaska were just places to strip of resources. Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye did indeed bring home the pork – because it was needed. There was no infrastructure – just resources leaving. They helped to build their new states into functional and competitive states. Yeah, we can yell about pork and favors and other wrongs or alleged wrongs, but they gave everything they had to bring their former territories into mainstream America. Their time has now passed, and we will judge them by different standards, but they served their states as best they could.
I recently read an interview where Sen. Inouye said he disagreed with Stevens about 90% of the time on policy, but they agreed on supporting their states.
Inouye won the Medal of Honor because with a bullet in his stomach and his right arm blown off, he continued to lead his men to victory. Unfortunately, that medal as not awarded for decades. He returned home to a country that refused to cut his hair or serve him a meal because he was a “Jap”. He went on to desegregate the dining room at the U.S. House of Representatives, support civil rights, denounce DOMA, and support universal healthcare.
In the stories about his death, it is always mentioned that he was a Medal of Honor recipient. He received the Medal for actions in April, 1945 but did not receive the Medal until June, 2000. He and 21 other Japanese Americans received the Medal after a review of records by the DOD. None of them had been recommended for the Medal at the time of their actions, no doubt, like African American soldiers, because of their race. If you read the accounts of the action for which he received the medal, you scratch your head that it took 55 years. It is also ironic that, first, he was not allowed to enlist for two years because of his ancestry, and second, that while he was fighting for this country, many other Japanese Americans were locked away in camps. I remember him from both the Watergate hearings and the Iran Contra hearings and admired him for the way he conducted himself. I still remember his rebuke of Oliver North for North’s actions and violation of the Constitution which both of them took an oath to, and fought for. Aloha, Senator, E ho’omaha me ka maluhia. GO FOR BROKE!