A dozen or so proteges of the late U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye plan to lay red roses at his grave at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific on Saturday’s 10th anniversary of his death. Then they will salute Inouye’s legacy at his favorite Japanese restaurant, as they have every year to honor him.
Following his death at the age of 88, his name now appears on 24 places in Hawaii; Fort Benning, Ga.; and even in Israel. Among them are Hawaii’s largest and busiest airport; a guided-missile destroyer based at Pearl Harbor; a Matson Inc. cargo ship; a solar telescope on Maui; a Waianae elementary school; buildings across the University of Hawaii system and at Chaminade University; Kauai’s Kilauea Point Lighthouse; and the formerly named Saddle Road connecting east and west Hawaii island.
Perhaps more important, his legacy also includes mentoring generations of Hawaii policymakers, political candidates and island movers and shakers who filled approximately 600 full- and part-time positions in his Washington, D.C., and Hawaii offices, in addition to another 300 or so interns, according to Jennifer Sabas, his former chief of staff who now runs the Daniel K. Inouye Institute, which honors Inouye through community efforts. Sabas started with Inouye in 1987.
Graduates of “Inouye University,” as some of them call themselves, include four Hawaii judges, leaders in island business and nonprofit organizations, journalists, state legislators, former Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell and former Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi.
Whether at Friday staff potlucks or dinners at his favorite Korean restaurant in Arlington, Va., the senator would impart lessons about life and politics while emphasizing that Hawaii and its people came first, said state Rep. Scott Nishimoto (D, Ala Moana-Kapahulu-McCully- Moiliili), who started as a summer intern in 1997 and later returned as a staff assistant.
“I use things I learned in his office every day in my job now, like commitment to constituents, that the little things matter,” Nishimoto said. “Build common ground.”
Hawaii constituents who visited Inouye in his Washington office “would start tearing up,” Nishimoto said. “That kind of thing happened all the time.”
When Nishimoto ran for the state House in 2002, Inouye joined him on the campaign trail going door to door. “People were just shocked he was campaigning with me,” Nishimoto said. “They all wanted to talk to him.”
On Dec. 17, 2012, Nishimoto was landing in Honolulu when the flight crew announced that Inouye had died.
“I remember people crying on the plane,” Nishimoto said. “That’s a moment I’ll never forget. People were visibly shaken.”
Inouye needed no long-winded introduction in his own reelection campaigns to the U.S. Senate. His black-and-gold bumper stickers and yard signs required only three letters: “Dan.”
In the House, Nishimoto introduced the resolution to rename Honolulu International Airport after Inouye, which became reality in May 2017.
“I was really proud of that,” Nishimoto said. “There will never be another like him. He really loved Hawaii and its people. That was obvious.”
Caldwell also started as an Inouye intern and later moved up to full-time staff as a legislative assistant. When Caldwell also ran for the state House in 2002, Inouye regularly checked in as Caldwell canvassed what would become his Manoa district.
“He would call on the weekends and say, ‘Are you walking? Is it raining in Manoa?’ I’d say, ‘Yes, yes,’” Caldwell said. “‘He’d say, ‘Good, good. Don’t use an umbrella. People want to see you get wet.’ If it was sunny and hot, he’d say, ‘Are you sweating?’ I’d say, ‘Yes.’ He would say, ‘Good, good. People want to see you sweat.’”
When Caldwell lost the mayor’s race to Peter Carlisle, Inouye told Caldwell it just wasn’t his time and to keep going.
Asked what Inouye said when Caldwell later won his first of two mayoral terms in November 2012, Caldwell choked up and needed a moment to gather himself.
“I get sad,” Caldwell said. “He said he was very proud of me and that I worked really hard and that I didn’t give up. He was dead five weeks later.”
Inouye’s wife, Irene, later gave Caldwell a memento that he cherishes: a 1962 autographed photo of then- President John F. Kennedy to Inouye — “my friend” — signed, “with highest esteem.”
In his nearly 50 years in the Senate, Inouye was quick to reach out to Republicans if it meant helping his isolated island state. One of his best friends was the late Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who also represented a state with a small population disconnected from the mainland.
It was an odd pairing of personalities: the relatively stoic Inouye and the sometimes loud and bellicose Stevens.
“They were definitely not similar in demeanor and very different,” said Inouye’s only child, Ken Inouye. “My dad was a very sort of calm, mellow guy. But they actually might have complemented one another. I got to see it firsthand. They were genuine friends. They viewed each other as brothers.”
Inouye’s political career began in the territorial Legislature. After statehood in 1959, Inouye became Hawaii’s first member of the U.S. House, followed by his election to the U.S. Senate in 1962.
Inouye helped guide the islands through the advent of air travel and its transition from a plantation economy to one based on tourism.
In the Senate the national media regularly chastised Inouye and labeled him the king of pork-barrel spending. But Inouye was unapologetic for steering billions of federal dollars to modernize Hawaii’s roads and bridges and to fund programs and services across the state as one of the most powerful lawmakers in Congress, eventually becoming president pro tempore of the Senate and third in line to the presidency.
His political career survived an allegation in 1992 that he sexually assaulted his Queen Street hairstylist — Lenore Kwock, then 42 — long before the #MeToo movement.
A Kwock acquaintance secretly recorded Kwock making the allegations, which became public when Inouye’s political opponent, Republican Rick Reed, released the recording. Inouye denied the allegations, and there was no subsequent Senate or criminal follow-up.
In the Senate, Inouye cemented his reputation in national politics and became a hero to a generation of Asian Americans across the country as the first chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a member of the Senate Watergate committee and chair of the Iran-Contra Investigative Committee.
To his only child, father- son time always came with lessons about life, sacrifice and family.
Ken Inouye, now 58, remembers his dad taking him to his first concert at the age 12 outside of Washington. It was a Kiss performance with the band in full black-and-white face makeup, platform boots and pyrotechnics.
Asked whether his father enjoyed the show, Ken Inouye said, “Hell, no. He was probably the only guy in the place sitting down the whole time.”
But that wasn’t the point, Inouye said.
It was a lesson that he now applies to raising his own daughter, Maggie, also age 12.
“For me, as a parent, it raises the bar and reminds me that it’s not just about me, in fact it’s not about about me at all,” he said. “It’s about them. It translates into everyday life.”
Even at the age of 5 or 6, Dan Inouye took his son to movies about samurai and martial arts at Japanese- and Chinese-oriented theaters and to more mainstream John Wayne war movies. Each was followed by discussions about characters’ motivations, race, violence, morality and the reality of war versus what young Ken Inouye saw on the screen.
“It turned into real discussions about why they are fighting, what are they fighting over, do you think it’s right what they’re fighting over, the morality or right of why they’re fighting,” he said. “Every discussion included discussions of culture and ethics.”
But the most pointed message was that war movies did not represent what Dan Inouye had experienced up close, such as when a mortally wounded movie soldier “makes a long soliloquy before they die,” Inouye said. “He shared how he lost his arm when I was 5 years old. So no toy guns were allowed in the house. No war toys. No G.I. Joes. He felt those made light of war, that those things trivialized the act of war and the act of fighting.”
Daniel Ken Inouye was born Sept. 7, 1924, loved playing instruments and had early ambitions to become a musician, a conductor or an orthopedic surgeon after he broke his left arm as a child and his family could not afford to get it treated — until a benevolent doctor fixed it for free to the relief of his mother, Ken Inouye said.
But his goals and outlook swung to public service at McKinley High School when a teacher named Ruth King ingrained in Daniel Inouye important lessons about the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and what it means to be an American citizen.
“He would bring this up with great regularity,” Ken Inouye said. “His life was changed by that woman. He made it a point to say that changed his life.”
Then, at the age of 17, Daniel Inouye saw Japanese fighter planes attack Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and joined what would become the all-nissei — or second- generation Japanese American — 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which would go on to become the most decorated unit of its size during World War II.
Even among a unit filled with Japanese American heroes, Inouye stood out, receiving the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart with cluster.
He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his battlefield heroism as a second lieutenant leading an assault in 1945 in Italy. Inouye continued to lead the attack even after he was shot by a sniper, then lost his right arm from a grenade.
He rehabilitated in a hospital with another future senator, Republican Bob Dole, and they became lifelong friends.
Inouye’s friendships with Sens. Dole and Stevens ran deeper than pragmatic politics in the name of helping Hawaii and each other’s states, Ken Inouye said.
Like servicemen and women today, all three World War II veterans implicitly trusted one another, Inouye said.
“They knew somebody has your back as you’re running into enemy fire,” he said. “The thing they had in common was they saw true ugliness and true evil. When you experience something like that, you understand there are things worth fighting over and things not worth fighting over.”
Inouye has heard the theory that his father represented a bygone, bipartisan era in national politics. But he prefers to believe the pendulum will swing back from the current climate of divisiveness — for the good of the country that his father loved.
“If history continues its cyclical nature,” he said, “I would like to think we’re going back to working across political lines for the common good.”
