DANIEL INOUYE: PERSONAL JUSTICE ATTAINED

Daniel Inouye was 17 years old when he witnessed Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor. That day would “go down in infamy” for the US– and be life-altering for Inouye. In the wake of the attack, Inouye wanted to join the US military to fight back– but found he was ineligible to serve: the US War Department had reclassified all Japanese Americans as “Enemy Aliens” (PBS, The War – Daniel Inouye). This wave of suspicion and xenophobia would culminate with FDR’s signing of Executive Order 9066, which sent over 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps (HISTORY -- How Japanese Americans Fought for—and Won—Redress for WWII Incarceration).

Inouye petitioned the government to lift the ban and allow him to fight. In need of reinforcements, the War Department conceded, allowing Inouye to enlist in the 442nd Infantry Regiment Combat Team of Nisei fighters. Over two years of deployment in Europe, Inouye would be shot in the stomach and lose an arm in the service of the country that he had fought to fight for. But despite fighting honorably, Inouye and his peers in the 442nd regiment returned home to the same discrimination as when they left. Inouye would later recall walking into a barbershop in San Francisco decorated with medals and being told “We don’t serve Japs.” (DKII, Senator Daniel Inouye & Family: Watergate Changed his Life).

In 2013, a year after his passing, Daniel Inouye became the first and only senator to receive both the Medal of Freedom and the Medal of Honor. Ostensibly, these medals were for the courage he showed on the battlefield. But Inouye’s greatest act of courage would come when he returned home, fighting to ensure the violation of constitutional rights suffered by Japanese Americans during the war never happened again.

In 53 years of representing his home state of Hawaii Inouye was a consistent champion for democratic values, from his keynote at the 1968 Democratic National Convention where he warned against the dangers of suspicion and fear, to his seat on the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate, where he cautioned the importance of safeguarding the election process and voter rights. These fights were not without a price. As the highest ranking Asian American member of congress, he was often met with the same vitriol he endured in the 1940s. “My son… used to enjoy answering the phone. But [now] I grab the phone, because…there are [phone calls] that are rather hateful. I don’t want Danny… barraged by obscenities.” (DKII, Watergate Hearings Opening Statement).

In 1978, Inouye began the most important chapter in his battle for civil rights: working with the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) as a leader of the Redress Movement. The movement faced many challenges, beginning with divisions within the JACL itself. Haunted by their own moral shortcomings during WWII, many of the elder Nisei members were content to move on, popularizing words like shikataganai ("it can't be undone”) (Japanese American Redress). The 3rd generation Sansei, on the other hand, recognized internment within the context of the broader civil rights movement (NPR, The Unlikely Story Behind Japanese Americans fight for reparations), and believed reconciliation was essential– but were split between demanding a federal apology and demanding both an apology and monetary compensation. (Maki, How Japanese Americans Fought for—and Won—Redress for WWII Incarceration).

Redress also faced challenges from conservative revisionists like Lillian Baker, whose group Americans for Historical Accuracy claimed internment camps never existed, claimed pictures of the camps had been doctored, and argued its internees had been there voluntarily.

With a quiet courage that reflected his years of experience, Inouye realized the only way to move forward was to manifest a common, objective truth, suggesting “a federal commission to research and investigate the incarceration experience” (Maki, How Japanese Americans Fought for—and Won—Redress for WWII Incarceration). On August 2, 1979, Inouye co-sponsored Senate bill 1647 to form the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC).

After two years the CWRIC released its report, “Personal Justice Denied,” which chronicled the injustices suffered by Japanese-Americans during the war. The report elicited testimony from 750 witnesses across 10 US cities, with many sharing their stories for the first time. The report concluded internment was not done out of "military necessity” that had been claimed to defend Executive Order 9066, but from "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership” (Personal Justice Denied). The report offered three recommendations: a presidential apology, a foundation to educate the American public, and a payment of $20,000 to every detainee.

Inouye’s seniority in the senate helped rally support for the commission’s recommendations– as did his role as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition in the Summer of 1987. In his closing statement in the Iran Contra hearings, Inouye was discussing the abuse of power within the Reagan administration, but could just as well have been describing the dangerous logic that had led to Japanese internment: “‘This is a dangerous world,’ [the generals] said. That, my fellow citizens, is an excuse for autocracy, not for policy. Vigilance abroad does not require us to abandon our ideals or the rule of law at home. On the contrary, without our principles and without our ideals, we have little that is special or worthy to defend” (DKII, Iran-Contra Hearings Closing Statement). Just one month after Inouye cautioned of the dangers of autocracy in the Iran Contra hearings, a bill to enact the CWRIC’s recommendations--named HR 442 in honor of the Nisei regiment in which Inouye served--came to the floor of Congress.

On August 10, 1988, President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act into law, granting a presidential apology and redress payments of $20,000 to every living Japanese American who had been affected by Executive Order 9066. (HISTORY, How Japanese Americans Fought for—and Won—Redress for WWII Incarceration). For Inouye, the bill was the culmination of almost 50 years fighting for democratic values both on and off the battlefield, righting not only the wrongs perpetrated against Japanese Americans, but serving as a reminder to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans. Today, against a rising tide of antidemocratic forces, the courage of leaders like Daniel Inouye must inspire us to fight abuses of power in the face of hysteria and fear, and make sure that democracy, universal suffrage, and equity remain a reality for all Americans.