Daniel Inouye of Honolulu, Hawaii, was a U.S. Army soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his extraordinary actions in Italy 80 years ago today on April 21, 1945. He was also a U.S. Senator from Hawaii from 1963 until his death in 2012.
During the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Inouye served as a medical volunteer. In 1943, when the U.S. Army dropped its enlistment ban on Japanese Americans, Inouye enlisted in the Army and volunteered to be a part of the segregated all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He was promoted to sergeant within his first year and was assigned as a platoon sergeant, serving in Italy and France.
On April 21, 1945, Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily defended ridge along the Gothic Line in Italy. He was shot in the stomach and lost his right arm. Despite these injuries, he remained in the military until 1947 and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain.
Inouye was one of the Japanese American servicemen of the 442nd Regiment whose combat awards were upgraded to the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton in 2000.
Returning to Hawaii after the war, he earned a law degree and was elected to Hawaii’s territorial House of Representatives in 1953 and to the territorial Senate in 1957. When Hawaii achieved statehood in 1959, Inouye was elected as its first member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and in 1962 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was the first Japanese American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and later the first in the U.S. Senate. Inouye was the most senior U.S. senator and the President pro tempore of the Senate at the time of his death, making him the highest-ranking Asian-American politician in U.S. history.
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