Medal of Honor Veteran & Senator
Daniel K. Inouye, dies at 88
By Emma Brown, Monday, December 17, 2:56 PM
U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, a highly decorated World War II combat veteran, one of the longest-serving and most powerful Democrats in Washington DC, died Dec. 17 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. He was 88.
He grew up planning to
become a doctor until 1942, when as a teenager barely out of high school, he
joined what would become a revered Army regiment of Japanese Americans.
On an Italian
battlefield two years later, he destroyed three enemy machine gun nests even as
bullets tore through his stomach and legs. A grenade nearly ripped off his
right arm, and it was later amputated in an Army hospital.
Sen. Inouye’s military decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross, the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.
In 2000, Sen. Inouye was one of 22 Asian American veterans awarded the Medal of Honor after a review of their combat records.
While hospitalized for his war wounds at an Army hospital in Michigan, Sen. Inouye took to playing bridge with a fellow patient — a soldier from Kansas, Bob Dole, who had also been gravely injured in Italy.
When they talked about their futures, Dole said he planned to go to law school, run for the state legislature and eventually win a seat in Congress. Sen. Inouye graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1950 and George Washington University law school in 1952.
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