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Daniel Inouye, 1924-2012
During World War II, after the US Army lifted its ban on Japanese American enlistment, Daniel Inouye joined the first all-Nisei volunteer unit, winning a Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart with cluster after losing his right arm. He later received a Medal of Honor. He returned to his native Hawaii to help lead a movement that brought political power to the region's ethnic minorities. When Hawaii was admitted to the Union in 1959, Inouye became the new state's first congressman. He was elected to the US Senate in 1962, and in 2010 he became the Senate's senior member -- third in the line of presidential succession and the highest-ranking public official of Asian descent in American history. Inouye gained national attention serving on the Senate Watergate Committee in 1974. In 1976 the Senate majority leader appointed him chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, established to reform and monitor clandestine operations.
Richard Avedon, 1976 |