A Hero

I'm proud to be posting the 100th post on politicaLDS. This is really a fun site, and I've learned a lot from everyone who has participated - bloggers and commenters alike. Thank you all!

The Internet is an incredible place - Wikipedia, in particular. I was reading some articles on World War II and somehow made my way over to the entry for the Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor is the highest decoration awarded by the American military. Seven Medals have been awarded for acts since 1990, all posthumously, to military heroes who distinguished themselves "conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States".

I was reading through a list of living Medal of Honor recipients and I recognized a name - Daniel K. Inouye - who is a senator from Hawaii. His story is pretty incredible and I thought I'd share it.

I'm paraphrasing/quoting liberally from this page, which you should really go and read, it's a great, uplifting story.

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Dan Inouye was born in 1924 in Hawaii, the grandson of Japanese immigrants. His grandfather had moved to Hawaii to work, trying to earn money to pay off a debt of $400 incurred when his house burned down in 1899. They had hoped to be able to move back to Japan after five years, but with a wage of $10/month, it soon became clear they'd be staying there longer. (The debt, by the way, was eventually paid off, after thirty years of work.)

When the Pearl Harbor attacks happened, Inouye was a medical student, and gave aid and assistance. For Inouye and other Americans of Japanese ancestry, this was a difficult time:

...I was driven by an insidious sense of guilt from the instant the first Japanese plane appeared over Pearl Harbor. Of course we had nothing to feel guilty about, but we all carried this special burden. We felt it in the streets, where white men would sneer as we passed. We felt it in school when we heard our friends and neighbors called Jap-lovers. We felt it in the widely held suspicion that the nisei were a sort of built-in fifth column in Hawaii.

Not long after the war began, the military government ordered us to report all radios with shortwave bands. My father had just bought such a set. It was a beauty, picking up Tokyo and the Philippines perfectly We were all enormously proud of it for we had few possessions and had save] a long time to get it. But we promptly complied with the order, and about a week later three men came to our door. They were from Naval intelligence.

"Where is your radio?" one demanded.

"It is here," Father said. "Please come in."

"No, no. Bring it outside."

We did as he said and, without another word, he dug a screwdriver in behind the backing and ripped it off. I looked at my father. His eyes had narrowed, but he said nothing. The man with the screwdriver snapped the wiring inside the set, then reached in and removed the tubes one after another, smashing them on the ground. It was needless destruction; he could have deadened the shortwave band by disconnecting a single wire.

My father's face turned black, and I knew he would not suffer this indignity in silence.

"Here," he said, "let me help you." He reached down to the pile of wood we used for our stove and hefted his ax. Instantly all three of the Naval officials reached for the bulges under their jackets.

Father smiled sadly "Put your guns away, gentlemen," he said. "I only want to help." Then with three great swinging blows of the ax, he smashed the new radio into splinters of wood and glass. "There," he said, breathing hard from his effort and anger, "that should do it. Now you'll never have to worry about it."

He put down the ax and walked back up the steps into the house, leaving us looking at each other in silence.

Japanese-Americans were not allowed to fight in the War until January 1943, when they were permitted to form a segregated unit. Inouye was initially passed over for service because his medical service in Hawaii was perceived to be valuable; he quit the next day and was shipped out shortly thereafter:

There was a new flurry of packing and good-byes, all hasty now, and a heartfelt hug for my mother. Then my father and I caught the bus to the induction center. He was very somber. I tried to think of something to say, some way to tell him that he was important to me, and dear, but nothing came out.

After a long period of silence between us, he said unexpectedly, "You know what on means?"

"Yes," I replied. On is at the very heart of Japanese culture. On requires that when one man is aided by another, he incurs a debt that is never canceled, one that must be repaid at every opportunity.

"The Inouyes have great on for America," my father said. "It has been good to us. And now it is you who must try to return the goodness. You are my first son, and you are very precious to your mother and to me, but you must do what must be done. If it is necessary, you must be ready to. . . to. . ."

Unable to give voice to the dread word, he trailed off. "I know, Papa. I understand," I said.

"Do not bring dishonor on our name," he whispered urgently.

And then I was clambering up into the back of a GI truck, struggling to hold my balance as it rumbled off, and waving to the diminishing figure of my father.

"Good-by!" I called long after he was out of earshot, a forlorn but resolute figure standing there alone as if he never meant to leave. "Good-by!"

Inouye did not dishonor his family. Here's his account of his final battle in the War, and what happened thereafter:

We moved, and almost at once three machine guns opened up on us, pinning us down. I pulled a grenade from my belt and got up. Somebody punched me in the side, although there wasn't a soul near me, and I half fell backward. Then I counted off three seconds as I ran toward the nearest machine gun. I threw the grenade and it cleared the log bunker, exploding in a shower of dirt. When the gun crew staggered erect, I cut them down. My men were coming up now, and I waved them toward the other two emplacements.

"My God, Dan," someone yelled in my ear, "you're bleeding! Get down and I'll get an aid man." I looked down to where my right hand was clutching my stomach. Blood oozed between my fingers. I thought, "That was no punch, you dummy. You took a slug in the gut."

I wanted to keep moving. We were pinned down again and, unless we did something quickly they'd pick us off one at a time. I lurched up the hill again, and lobbed two grenades into the second emplacement before the gunners saw me. Then I fell to my knees. Somehow they wouldn't lock and I couldn't stand. I had to pull myself forward with one hand.

A man yelled, "Come on, you guys, go for broke!" And hunched over they charged into the fire of the third machine gun. I was fiercely proud of them. But they didn't have a chance against the deadly stutter of that last gun. They had to drop back and seek protection. But all that time I had been shuffling up on the flank, and at last I was close enough to pull the pin on my last grenade. As I drew my arm back, a German stood up waist-high in the bunker. He was aiming a rifle grenade at me from a range of ten yards. And then as I cocked my arm to throw, he fired, and the grenade smashed into my right elbow. It exploded and all but tore my arm off. I looked at my hand stunned. It dangled there by a few bloody shreds of tissue, my grenade still clenched in a fist that suddenly didn't belong to me anymore.

Some of my men were rushing up to help me. "Get back!" I screamed. Then I tried to pry the grenade out of that dead fist with my other hand. At last I had it free. The German was reloading his rifle, but my grenade blew up in his face. I stumbled to my feet, closing on the bunker, firing my tommy gun lefthanded, the useless right arm slapping red and wet against my side.

It was almost over. But one last German, before his death, squeezed off a final burst, and a bullet caught me in the right leg and threw me to the ground. I rolled over and over down the hill.

Some men came after me, but I yelled, "Get back up that hill! Nobody called off the war!"

After a while a medic got to me and gave me a shot of morphine. The German position was secured, and then they carried me away. It was April 21. The German resistance in our sector ended April 23. Nine days later, the war in Italy was over, and a week after that the enemy surrendered unconditionally.

To Light a Cigarette

Of course the arm had to come off. It wasn't an emotionally big deal for me. I knew it had to be done and had stopped thinking of it as belonging to me. But acceptance and rehabilitation are two different things. I had adjusted to the shock of losing my arm before the operation. My rehabilitation began almost immediately afterward.

I was staring at the ceiling my first day as an amputee, when a nurse came by and asked if I needed anything. "A cigarette would go pretty good," I said.

"Yes, surely." She smiled and walked off, resuming in a few minutes with a fresh, unopened pack. "Here you are, lieutenant," she said, still smiling, and placed it neatly on my chest and went on her way.

For a while I just stared at the pack. I fingered it with my left hand. Then I sneaked a look around the hospital ward to see if there was anyone in good enough shape to help me. But everyone seemed to be at least as badly off as I was. So I began pawing at that cursed pack, holding it under my chin and trying to rip it open with my fingernails, It kept slipping away from me and I kept trying again, sweating as profusely in my fury and frustration as if I were on a forced march. In 15 minutes I'd tom the pack and half the cigarettes to shreds, but I'd finally got one between my lips. Which was when I realized that the nurse hadn't brought me any matches.

I rang the bell and she came sashaying in, still smiling, still "tailing an aura of good cheer that made me want to clout her. "I need a light," I said.

"Oh," she said prettily, "of course you do." She pulled a pack of matches out of her pocket-she had had them all the time-and carefully put them in my hand. And she strolled off again.

If I obeyed my first impulse, I'd have bellowed after her in rage. If I'd obeyed my second impulse, I'd have burst out crying. But I couldn't let her get the best of me. I just couldn't.

So I started fooling around with the matches. I pulled them and twisted them and dropped them, and I never came remotely close to tearing one free, let alone lighting it. But this time I had decided that I'd sooner boil in oil than ask her for anything again. So I lay there, fuming silently and having extremely unchristian thoughts about that angel of mercy

I was on the verge of dozing off when she reappeared, still smiling. "What's the matter, lieutenant?" she purred. "Have you decided to quit smoking? It's just as well. . . cigarettes make you cough and.. ."

"I couldn't get the damned thing lit."

She tsk-tsked and sat on the edge of my bed. "Some amputees like to figure it out for themselves," she said. "It gives them a feeling of--well, accomplishment. There'll be lots of things you'll be reaming for yourself."

"Look," I growled, "just light the cigarette. I've been three hours trying to get this thing smoked."

"Yes, I know. But, you see, I won't be around to light your cigarettes all the time. You have only one hand with which to do all the things that you used to do with two. And you have to learn how. We'll start with the matches, all right?"

Then she opened the cover, bent a match forward, closed the cover, flicked the match down and lit it-all with one hand, all in a split second.

"See?" she asked. "Now you do it."

I did it. I lit the cigarette. And suddenly her smile was not objectionable at all. It was lovely. In a single moment she had made me see the job that lay ahead. It took me a year and a half to become fully functioning again, but I never learned a more important lesson than I did that afternoon.

He returned home from the war with numerous decorations, met and married his wife, and entered politics. He was elected to the Hawaii Territorial House of Representatives in 1954, then the Territorial Senate, and after Hawaii was granted statehood, the U.S. House of Representatives:

In 1962, then-Congressman Leo O'Brien of New York commemorated the third anniversary of Hawaii's admission to the Union by reminiscing about Dan Inouye's arrival on the national political scene. His recollection of the day Dan Inouye took the oath of office in the U.S. House was recorded in the Congressional Record:

"Tuesday last was the third anniversary of the admission of Hawaii. Today is the third anniversary of one of the most dramatic and moving scenes ever to occur in this House. On that day, a young man, just elected to Congress from the brand new state, walked into the well of the House and faced the late Speaker Sam Rayburn.

"The House was very still. It was about to witness the swearing in, not only of the first Congressman from Hawaii, but the first American of Japanese descent to serve in either House of Congress.

" Raise your right hand and repeat after me,' intoned Speaker Rayburn.

"The hush deepened as the young Congressman raised not his right hand but his left and he repeated the oath of office.

"There was no right hand, Mr. Speaker. It had been lost in combat by that young American soldier in World War II. Who can deny that, at that moment, a ton of prejudice slipped quietly to the floor of the House of Representatives."

He became a senator in 1963, and has served in the U.S. Senate ever since. On June 21, 2000, President Clinton presented him with the Medal of Honor.

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We have a common heritage of great Americans who have come before us and served selflessly - not just in the military, but in factories, offices, and in the home. This man was not held back by racism, poverty, or bullets - rather, he was driven forward by a love of family, culture and country. I think we all have something to learn from this story. May we live up to those who have sacrificed on our behalf.