Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Inouye

Daniel Inouye died yesterday after 50 years in the United States Senate.  Never exactly the most loquacious politician he was well-regarded and powerful within the Senate.  But no story will ever demonstrate why Inouye was a Democrat and a voice for Civil Rights more than this:

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. 

Back in the United States, the young lieutenant was wearing his empty right sleeve pinned to his officer’s uniform when he stepped into a San Francisco barbershop for a haircut. “We don’t serve Japs here,” the barber told him.

Memories of such encounters remained vivid to Sen. Inouye, who in his political career spoke eloquently in support of civil rights and social welfare programs.

5 comments:

cobbnek said...

He was indeed a hero. However, comma, he held up the rug for Reagan's Iran-Contra treason to be swept under during the late 1980's Congressional hearings, the ones where Ollie North so famously perjured himself. Paul in Texas

pansypoo said...

he wasn't the only one to give reagan a pass.

if only limbaugh + the fux gnews heads were denied service for their 'color'.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone else watch to the very end of Norths congressional testimony, when Inouye asked him to recite his West Point oath, and then quizzed him on the many ways he'd broken the oath?

Amazing.

And North had to sit there and take it from a decorated, severely legendary wounded war hero.

frankly said...

I had a neighbor down in Florida, an older African-American man. He was a wounded WWII vet. We lived near Titusville but he refused to go there for anything. He said he came home after the war and went into the market to buy groceries. He was in uniform that had his medals but the owner looked at him & said "We don't sell to niggers"

What a country we have.

Sharon said...

You wanna know just how much of a badass he was?

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/inouye.html

I can overlook a lot considering what he did during the Big One.