Daniel Inouye Daniel Ken " Dan " Inouye ( pronounced ; September 7 , 1924 – December 17 , 2012 ) was a Medal of Honor recipient , a recipient ( posthumously ) of the Presidential Medal of Freedom , a United States Senator from Hawaii , a member of the Democratic Party , and the President pro tempore of the United States Senate from 2010 until his death in 2012 , making him the highest - ranking Asian American politician in U . S . history . Inouye was the chairman of the U . S . Senate Committee on Appropriations . A senator since 1963 , Inouye was the most senior U . S . senator at the time of his death . He is the second - longest serving U . S . Senator in history after Robert Byrd . Inouye continuously represented Hawaii in the U . S . Congress since it achieved statehood in 1959 until the time of his death , serving as Hawaii ' s first U . S . Representative and later a senator . Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in the U . S . House of Representatives and later the first in the U . S . Senate . Before then , he served in the Hawaii territorial house from 1954 to 1958 and the territorial senate from 1958 to 1959 . He never lost an election in 58 years as an elected official . At the time of his death , Inouye was the second - oldest sitting U . S . senator , after Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey . Because of his seniority , following Senator Byrd ' s death on June 28 , 2010 , Inouye became President pro tempore of the Senate , making him third in the presidential line of succession after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives . Early life . Daniel Inouye was born on September 7 , 1924 , in Honolulu , Hawaii , the son of Kame ( née Imanaga ) and Hyotaro Inouye . He was a Nisei Japanese American , as the son of a Japanese immigrant father and a mother whose parents had also immigrated from Japan . He grew up in the Bingham Tract , a Chinese - American enclave within the predominantly Japanese American community of Mōiliili in Honolulu . He graduated from Honolulu ' s President William McKinley High School . Family . Inouye ' s wife of nearly 57 years , Margaret " Maggie " Awamura Inouye , died of cancer on March 13 , 2006 . On May 24 , 2008 , he married Irene Hirano in a private ceremony in Beverly Hills , California . Ms . Hirano was president and founding chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles , California . She resigned the position at the time of her marriage in order to be closer to her husband . According to the " Honolulu Advertiser " , at the time of their wedding Inouye was twenty - four years older than Hirano . On May 27 , 2010 , Ms . Hirano was elected by the board to chair the nation ' s second largest non - profit organization The Ford Foundation . Inouye ' s son Kenny was the guitarist for influential D . C . hardcore punk band Marginal Man . Military service ( 1941 – 1947 ) . 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 curtailed his premedical studies at the University of Hawaii and enlisted in the Army . He volunteered to be part of the all - " Nisei " 442nd Regimental Combat Team . This army unit was mostly made up of second - generation Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland . Inouye was promoted to the rank of sergeant within his first year , and he was given the role of platoon leader . He served in Italy in 1944 during the Rome - Arno Campaign before his regiment was transferred to the Vosges Mountains region of France , where he spent two weeks in the battle to relieve the Lost Battalion , a battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment that was surrounded by German forces . He was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant for his actions there . At one point while he was leading an attack , a shot struck him in the chest directly above his heart , but the bullet was stopped by the two silver dollars he happened to have stacked in his shirt pocket . He continued to carry the coins throughout the war in his shirt pocket as good luck charm s until he lost them shortly before the battle in which he lost his arm . On April 21 , 1945 , Inouye was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily - defended ridge near San Terenzo in Tuscany , Italy , called Colle Musatello . The ridge served as a strongpoint along the strip of German fortifications known as the Gothic Line , which represented the last and most unyielding line of German defensive works in Italy . As he led his platoon in a flanking maneuver , three German machine guns opened fire from covered positions just 40 yards away , pinning his men to the ground . Inouye stood up to attack and was shot in the stomach ; ignoring his wound , he proceeded to attack and destroy the first machine gun nest with hand grenade s and fire from his Thompson submachine gun . After being informed of the severity of his wound by his platoon sergeant , he refused treatment and rallied his men for an attack on the second machine gun position , which he also successfully destroyed before collapsing from blood loss . As his squad distracted the third machine gunner , Inouye crawled toward the final bunker , eventually drawing within 10 yards . As he raised himself up and cocked his arm to throw his last grenade into the fighting position , a German inside the bunker fired a rifle grenade that struck him on the right elbow , severing most of his arm and leaving his own primed grenade reflexively " clenched in a fist that suddenly didn ' t belong to me anymore " . Inouye ' s horrified soldiers moved to his aid , but he shouted for them to keep back out of fear his severed fist would involuntarily relax and drop the grenade . While the German inside the bunker reloaded his rifle , Inouye pried the live grenade from his useless right hand and transferred it to his left . As the German aimed his rifle to finish him off , Inouye tossed the grenade into the bunker and destroyed it . He stumbled to his feet and continued forward , silencing the last German resistance with a one - handed burst from his Thompson before being wounded in the leg and tumbling unconscious to the bottom of the ridge . When he awoke to see the concerned men of his platoon hovering over him , his only comment before being carried away was to gruffly order them to return to their positions , since , as he pointed out , " nobody called off the war ! " The remainder of Inouye ' s mutilated right arm was later amputated at a field hospital without proper anesthesia , as he had been given too much morphine at an aid station and it was feared any more would lower his blood pressure enough to kill him . Although Inouye had lost his right arm , he remained in the military until 1947 and was honorably discharged with the rank of captain . At the time of his leaving the Army , he was a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart . Inouye was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his bravery in this action , with the award later being upgraded to the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton ( alongside 19 other Nisei servicemen who served in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were believed to have been denied proper recognition of their bravery due to their race ) . His story , along with interviews with him about the war as a whole , were featured prominently in the 2007 Ken Burns documentary " The War " . While recovering at Percy Jones Army Hospital from war wounds and the amputation of his right forearm following the grenade wound , Inouye met future Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole , then a fellow patient . While at the same hospital , Inouye also met future fellow Democrat and Senator Philip Hart , who had been injured on D - Day . Dole mentioned to Inouye that after the war , he planned to go to Congress ; Inouye beat him there by a few years . The two remained lifelong friends . In 2003 , the hospital was renamed the Hart - Dole - Inouye Federal Center in honor of the three World War II veteran s . Congressional career . Due to the loss of his arm , Inouye abandoned his plans to become a surgeon , and returned to college to study political science under the G . I . Bill . He graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1950 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science . He earned his law degree from The George Washington University Law School in Washington , D . C . , in 1953 and was elected into the Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity . In 1953 , he was elected to the Hawaii territorial House of Representatives , and was immediately elected majority leader . He served two terms there , and was elected to the Hawaii territorial senate in 1957 . Midway through Inouye ' s first term in the territorial senate , Hawaii achieved statehood . He won a seat in the U . S . House of Representatives as Hawaii ' s first full member , and took office on August 21 , 1959 , the same date Hawaii became a state ; he was re - elected in 1960 . In 1962 , he was elected to the U . S . Senate , succeeding fellow Democrat Oren E . Long . He was reelected eight times , usually without serious difficulty . His closest race was in 1992 when state senator Rick Reed held him to 57 percent of the vote — the only time he received less than 69 percent of the vote . He delivered the keynote address at the turbulent 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago , and gained national attention for his service on the Senate Watergate Committee . He was chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975 until 1979 , and chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs from 1987 until 1995 and from 2001 until 2003 . Inouye was also involved in the Iran - Contra investigations of the 1980s , chairing a special committee ( Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition ) from 1987 until 1989 . During the hearings , Inouye referred to the operations that had been revealed as a " secret government " saying : " [ There exists ] a shadowy Government with its own Air Force , its own Navy , its own fundraising mechanism , and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest , free from all checks and balances , and free from the law itself . " Criticizing the logic of Marine Lt . Colonel Oliver North ' s justifications for his actions in the affair , Inouye made reference to the Nuremberg trials , provoking a heated interruption from North ' s attorney Brendan V . Sullivan , Jr . , an exchange that was widely repeated in the media at the time . He was also seen as a pro - Taiwan senator , and helped in forming the Taiwan Relations Act . In 2009 , Inouye assumed leadership of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations after longtime chairman Robert Byrd stepped down . Following the latter ' s death on June 28 , 2010 , Inouye was elected President pro tempore , the officer third in the presidential line of succession . In 2010 , Inouye announced his decision to run for a ninth term . He easily won the Democratic primary — the real contest in this heavily Democratic state — and then trounced Republican state representative Campbell Cavasso with 74 percent of the vote . Prior to his death , Inouye announced that he planned to run for a record tenth term in 2016 , when he would have been 92 years old . He also said , " I have told my staff and I have told my family that when the time comes , when you question my sanity or question my ability to do things physically or mentally , I don ' t want you to hesitate , do everything to get me out of here , because I want to make certain the people of Hawaii get the best representation possible . " Gang of 14 . On May 23 , 2005 , Inouye was a member of a bipartisan group of fourteen moderate senators , known as the Gang of 14 , to forge a compromise on the Democrats ' use of the judicial filibuster , thus blocking the Republican leadership ' s attempt to implement the " nuclear option " , a means of forcibly ending a filibuster . Under the agreement , the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an " extraordinary circumstance " , and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees ( Janice Rogers Brown , Priscilla Owen and William H . Pryor , Jr . ) would receive a vote by the full U . S . Senate . Honors and decorations . Awards and decorations . On May 27 , 1947 , he was honorably discharged and returned home as a Captain with a Distinguished Service Cross , Bronze Star Medal , 2 Purple Hearts , and 12 other medals and citations . In 2000 , his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor . < br > < br > < br > < br > Medal of Honor citation . Citation : Second Lieutenant Daniel K . Inouye distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism in action on 21 April 1945 , in the vicinity of San Terenzo , Italy . While attacking a defended ridge guarding an important road junction , Second Lieutenant Inouye skillfully directed his platoon through a hail of automatic weapon and small arms fire , in a swift enveloping movement that resulted in the capture of an artillery and mortar post and brought his men to within 40 yards of the hostile force . Emplaced in bunkers and rock formations , the enemy halted the advance with crossfire from three machine guns . With complete disregard for his personal safety , Second Lieutenant Inouye crawled up the treacherous slope to within five yards of the nearest machine gun and hurled two grenades , destroying the emplacement . Before the enemy could retaliate , he stood up and neutralized a second machine gun nest . Although wounded by a sniper ’ s bullet , he continued to engage other hostile positions at close range until an exploding grenade shattered his right arm . Despite the intense pain , he refused evacuation and continued to direct his platoon until enemy resistance was broken and his men were again deployed in defensive positions . In the attack , 25 enemy soldiers were killed and eight others captured . By his gallant , aggressive tactics and by his indomitable leadership , Second Lieutenant Inouye enabled his platoon to advance through formidable resistance , and was instrumental in the capture of the ridge . Second Lieutenant Inouye ’ s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit on him , his unit , and the United States Army . Death . In 2012 Inouye began using a wheelchair in the Senate to preserve his knees , and received an oxygen concentrator to aid his breathing . In November 2012 , he suffered a minor cut after falling in his apartment and was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center . On December 6 , he was again hospitalized at George Washington University Hospital so doctors could further regulate his oxygen intake , and was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center on December 10 . He died there of respiratory complications seven days later on December 17 , 2012 . According to the senator ' s Congressional web site , his last word was " Aloha " . Prior to his death , Inouye left a letter encouraging Governor Neil Abercrombie to appoint Colleen Hanabusa to succeed Inouye should he become incapacitated ; instead Abercrombie appointed Hawaii ' s Lieutenant Governor Brian Schatz . Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Inouye ' s death on the floor of the Senate , referring to Inouye as " certainly one of the giants of the Senate . " Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to Inouye as one of the finest senators in United States history . President Barack Obama referred to him as a " true American hero . " Inouye ' s body lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda on December 20 , 2012 ; only the 31st person – and first Asian - American – so honored . President Obama , former President Bill Clinton , Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner spoke at a funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on December 21 . Inouye ' s body was then flown to Hawaii , where it lay in state at the Hawaii State Capitol on December 22 . A second funeral service was held at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu the following day .