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.
Rising Hegemon
5 comments:
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
he wasn't the only one to give reagan a pass.
if only limbaugh + the fux gnews heads were denied service for their 'color'.
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.
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.
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.
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