WEBVTT

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(interviewer)
I think I want to start today

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by asking you when you first became aware
of this man from Hawaiʻi?

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Very strange, very old.

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I ran into him when he first came
here in the late ‘50s in the Congress.

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Some way or another, we met each other
and there was kind of an easy rapport.

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The result was I said,

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“Why don’t I just have a party
at my house inviting you here?

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You can meet a lot of friends
and I think you’ll enjoy it.”

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So that started it.
That was in ‘59, I believe.

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It just, there was
just something easy about it.

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He was a person quite…
oh, I don’t know how to say it.

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Inouye, he had a certain infectious warmth
to him and he seemed

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so incredibly unpretentious
when I had learned so much of his

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extraordinary bravery during World War II,
both in France and in Italy,

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and that’s how I first learned
about his silver dollars.

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I don’t know if you know about that,
but before he went to Italy,

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he was in France.

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His initial assignment, as I now--
I’m reporting what he told me.

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So his initial assignment was
to find the Lost Battalion of Texas.

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I don’t know if you knew anything
about that, and I said,

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“I’ve never heard about that, Dan.”

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But the result was he said he always had
an unusually warm relationship with Texas.

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They admired what he had done
and he I guess had been shot,

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but it hit one of his silver dollars,
and he always had them with him.

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I don’t know whatever happened to those,
frankly, but he showed them

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to me one time.

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I said, “This is so remarkable.
I’m finding this hard to believe.”

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But it was true, as it turns out,
and they did find the Lost Battalion

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and he became this first hero.

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But I guess he had a raise in grade
from private or sergeant, beyond that.

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So that was where we first met
and started to meet,

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and then we just had this feeling,
I guess, of comfort with each other.

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I certainly began to admire more
and more of what he did,

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and then we began a rather long,
now that I think about it,

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it’s a half a century, of trying
to get together and just talk.

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That’s why we were sitting
in the corner dining room,

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in the Senate dining room,
just two, three days before he died,

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and he still had the oxygen.

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It was extremely pleasant
and he didn’t show any signs

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of being tired or lacking energy.

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He was really fine, and he said he was
having a little problems with his knees,

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which had been a long-term thing
for the last few years.

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But he was just fine, we talked--
and that was when he talked

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about Irene, and that was kind of fun.

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(interviewer) So you’re
a good describer of people, I think.

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What was he like, ‘59, ‘60, ‘61?

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Well, that’s a very interesting question.

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Let me tell you why--
I never really noted any difference

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in the way he approached people,
even though he became a national monument.

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He always was the same.

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He had a certain warmth,
a certain reticence.

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He never seemed to need
all the panoply of glory that seems

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to surround a lot of the people
who are in the Senate.

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He never had that, and I don’t know
if that is widely perceived,

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but I never saw a great change in him.

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I saw his--

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He was much more serious
about a number of things.

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‘Cause I didn’t know much
about his serious side

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other than his war record,
but he was basically always the same.

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Kind of interesting to me,
so I would have a hard time describing him

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as a different person
that grew in his own public…