A Small Lesson In Perspective

If it's hard to remember a time when the State of Hawaii was not represented in Washington, D.C. by Daniel Inouye, the state's senior Senator who died earlier today, that's because until today, there has never been a time since statehood that Hawaii hasn't been represented by Inouye, first as a Congressman, and then as a Senator. For the first time in its history as a state, Hawaii faces a future without Dan Inouye. This is a radically different political landscape.

Tributes are pouring in, and I haven't the requisite chess skills to play the political guessing game, but I thought I'd share this one memory for whatever it's worth.

Back in the day, when I was growing up, Inouye and Sparky Matsunaga (when Matsunaga was a Congressman, before he became Hawaii's second Senator), used to come by the Disabled American Veterans' hall at Keehi Lagoon to visit their old 100th Battalion/442d RCT buddies who had, like them, "been there, done that." My father was also a member of the DAV, and despite being a career soldier and a haole guy, had been accepted into this group of mostly AJA and local WWII and Korean War vets. Maybe it had something to do with him having married a local girl who had grown up with these same guys on the Halawa and Aiea plantations, or maybe it was the fact that Dad was quiet and respectful, and was, as one of his fellow vets said, "one of the good ones." I would accompany Dad to their weekly meetings which mostly consisted of them sitting around drinking countless Oly's and Primo's, singing songs and playing ukulele, and "talking story" while I listened wide-eyed.

During election season, Senator Inouye and Congressman Matsunaga would drop in. I suppose they were there to get votes, but they spent much more time with their old comrades than was necessary to do just that. (Besides, I don't think there was any doubt for whom these men would be voting, and they really needed no convincing.) I got the sense that Senator Inouye in particular, who lost his right arm in combat in Italy in the action that would earn him the Medal of Honor, felt particularly at ease among his fellow disabled vets. Many of these men were in wheelchairs, were missing fingers or limbs or other body parts, or had visible burn scars. They were veterans, but more importantly disabled veterans, and even as a kid I understood the distinction and how they held themselves apart from others. Among these men, the powerful politicians were "Danny" and "Sparky," not Senator Inouye and Congressman Matsunaga.

Both of whom, by the way, were pretty nice to the little hapa-haole kid who used to go with his dad to the meetings.