President Barack Obama on Friday hailed the late senator Daniel Inouye for showing that “America has a place for everyone” and said his own journey was inspired by the war hero who overcame prejudice.
To a musical mix featuring a church organ and a ukulele from his native Hawaii, pallbearers escorted Inouye’s body into Washington’s imposing National Cathedral for a service attended by Obama and former president Bill Clinton.
Inouye, the second-longest serving senator in US history, delivered first aid to casualties of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor even as fellow Japanese Americans were accused of disloyalty and later sent to camps.
Inouye volunteered to serve in an all Japanese American unit. In 1944, he lost his right arm when his unit came under fire in Italy, but he managed to throw grenades even after a bullet went through his abdomen and back.
Obama, who grew up in Hawaii, recalled his first trip to the mainland United States where he saw his home senator asking questions at the hearings on the Watergate scandal which he watched with his mother at a motel.
“Here I was, a young boy with a white mom, a black father, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, and I was beginning to sense how fitting into the world might not be as simple as it might seem,” said Obama, who speaks sparingly in public about his race.
“And so to see this man, this senator — this powerful, accomplished person — who wasn’t out of central casting when it came to what you’d think a senator might look like at the time,” he said.
“The way he commanded the respect of an entire nation — I think it hinted to me what might be possible in my own life,” Obama said.
“We remember a man who inspired all of us with his courage and moved us with his compassion, that inspired us with his integrity and who taught so many of us, including a young boy growing up in Hawaii, that America has a place for everyone,” Obama said.
Inouye represented Hawaii in Congress from the day the Pacific archipelago became the 50th US state in 1959 until his death on Monday at age 88.
The highest ranking Asian American in US history, Inouye’s long service earned him the honorary position of president pro tempore of the Senate, which made him third in line to the presidency.
Obama mourns war hero Inouye as inspiration
