Memorial service for Sen. Inouye held in Hawaii

Pall­bear­ers carry the cas­ket of U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye into the court­yard of the Hawaii state Capi­tol dur­ing a vis­i­ta­tion cer­e­mony Sat­ur­day in Hon­olulu. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Oskar Garcia)

BECKY BOHRER

Asso­ci­ated Press

HONOLULU — The late Sen. Daniel Inouye was remem­bered Sun­day as an Amer­i­can hero whose legacy as a war vet­eran and long­time sen­a­tor would be felt across Hawaii for years to come.

The memo­r­ial ser­vice at Honolulu’s National Memo­r­ial Ceme­tery of the Pacific was attended by about 1,000 peo­ple, includ­ing Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, Sen­ate Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, Hawaii’s con­gres­sional del­e­ga­tion and a num­ber of other sen­a­tors, cab­i­net sec­re­taries and other dignitaries.

“Daniel was the best sen­a­tor among us all,” Reid told those assem­bled, adding later: “When­ever we needed a noble man to lean on, we turned to Sen. Dan Inouye. He was fearless.”

The ceme­tery, a strik­ingly beau­ti­ful site located in an extinct vol­cano, is the final rest­ing place to thou­sands of World War II vet­er­ans. More than 400 mem­bers of the sto­ried Japanese-American 442nd Reg­i­men­tal Com­bat Team — of which Inouye was a part — are buried at the site.

Adm. Samuel Lock­lear, com­man­der of the Navy’s U.S. Pacific Com­mand, said this also will be Inouye’s final rest­ing place.

“We have lost an irre­place­able Amer­i­can,” he said.

Sev­eral 442nd vet­er­ans attended the Sun­day morn­ing ser­vice, the lat­est in a num­ber of trib­utes and hon­ors for Inouye fol­low­ing the 88-year-old’s Dec. 17 death from res­pi­ra­tory complications.

Buses that brought peo­ple to the ser­vice flashed the words “MAHALO Sen­a­tor Daniel K. Inouye” — using the Hawai­ian word for thank you.

A 19-gun can­non salute was fired as Inouye’s cof­fin arrived at the ceme­tery. The ser­vice also fea­tured a fly­over by F-22 mil­i­tary jets and the play­ing of “Taps” by Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.

Inouye’s widow, Irene, who was seated with the pres­i­dent and first lady Michelle Obama in the front row, dabbed her eyes as a band of bag­pipes and drums band played “Danny Boy.”

Inouye was the first Japanese-American elected to both houses of Con­gress and the second-longest serv­ing sen­a­tor in U.S. his­tory, at 50 years.

He was a high school senior in Hon­olulu on Dec. 7, 1941, when he watched dozens of Japan­ese planes fly toward Pearl Har­bor and other Oahu mil­i­tary bases to begin a bomb­ing that changed the course of world events.

He vol­un­teered for a spe­cial U.S. Army unit of Japanese-Americans and lost his right arm in a bat­tle with Ger­mans in Italy. That scratched his dream of becom­ing a sur­geon and he went to law school and into pol­i­tics instead.

“He was a shin­ing star of the great­est gen­er­a­tion,” fel­low Hawaii Demo­c­ra­tic Sen. Daniel Akaka said at the service.

Akaka, who served with Inouye for 36 years, also high­lighted Inouye’s role in steer­ing fed­eral money to build roads, schools, hous­ing and other infra­struc­ture in Hawaii over the decades, from the begin­ning of statehood.

“Dan Inouye is Hawaii, and Hawaii is Dan Inouye,” Akaka said.

Inouye’s chief of staff, Jen­nifer Sabas, said Inouye was calm, in con­trol and giv­ing out instruc­tions until the very end. Then, “he penned ‘aloha,’ and went on to a bet­ter place,” she said.

“Aloha, boss,” she said in clos­ing, as she stood beside his flag-draped coffin.

Sev­eral ser­vices have already been held in Wash­ing­ton and in Hawaii for Inouye. He lay in state at both the U.S. Capi­tol Rotunda on Thurs­day and the Hawaii state Capi­tol on Sat­ur­day. A pub­lic ser­vice is planned for Fri­day on Kauai. His bur­ial is expected to be a pri­vate, fam­ily event.

Obama eulo­gized Inouye dur­ing a ser­vice at Washington’s National Cathe­dral on Fri­day, say­ing that Inouye’s pres­ence dur­ing the Water­gate hear­ings helped show him what could be pos­si­ble in his own life.

The pres­i­dent arrived early Sat­ur­day in Hon­olulu for his annual Christ­mas fam­ily vaca­tion. He made a brief visit to the grave of his grand­fa­ther, World War II vet­eran Stan­ley Dun­ham, after Sunday’s service.

Posted by AP News on Dec 23 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.