WASHINGTON - Recovering from war wounds that left him with one arm, Danny Inouye wanted a cigarette and needed a light.
The nurse at the Army hospital in Michigan threw a pack of matches on his chest. He wanted to curse her. Instead, she taught him how to light it one-handed.
"Then she said, 'I'm not going to be around here for the rest of your life. You'll have to learn how to light your own matches, cut your own meat, dress yourself and do everything else. So from now on you're going to be learning,'" Inouye recalled decades later.
From that moment on it seemed like nothing would stop a determined Daniel K. Inouye, who died Monday after a uniquely American life defined by heroism in war and decades of service in the Senate - and a lifelong love of Hawaii symbolized by his last utterance.
"Aloha."
People are also reading…
Inouye, who broke racial barriers on Capitol Hill and played key roles in congressional investigations of the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, was 88.
A senator since January 1963, Inouye was at the time of his death the longest serving senator and was president pro tempore of the Senate, third in the line of presidential succession. His office said Monday that he died of respiratory complications at a Washington-area hospital.
Less than an hour after Inouye's passing, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Inouye's death to a stunned chamber.
"Our friend Daniel Inouye has died," Reid said somberly. Shocked members of the Senate stood in the aisles or slumped in their chairs.
Inouye was a World War II hero and Medal of Honor recipient who lost an arm to a German hand grenade during a battle in Italy. He became the first Japanese-American to serve in Congress, when he was elected to the House in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state. He won election to the Senate three years later and served there longer than anyone in American history except Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who died in 2010 after 51 years in the Senate.
President Obama, a native of Hawaii, said in a statement, "Tonight, our country has lost a true American hero with the passing of Sen. Daniel Inouye. ... It was his incredible bravery during World War II - including one heroic effort that cost him his arm but earned him the Medal of Honor - that made Danny not just a colleague and a mentor, but someone revered by all of us lucky enough to know him."
Inouye died after a relatively brief hospitalization. Once a regular smoker, he had a portion of a lung removed in the 1960s after a misdiagnosis for cancer. Just last week, he issued a statement expressing optimism about his recovery.
Despite his age and illness, Inouye's death shocked members of the Senate.
"I'm too broken up," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who becomes president pro tem of the Senate. Leahy also is poised to take over the Senate Appropriations Committee.
