Sen. Dan Inouye's Wounded Group

Captain Daniel K. Inouye's Wounds

While still a Lieutenant, the man who was to become one of the most popular and longest-serving Senators, was grievously wounded while leading an assault on a heavily defended ridge near San Terenzo in Liguria, Italy, called the Colle Musatello. It was April of 1945 and his unit was heavily engaged in combat with the German Army.

He was an officer in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which had one of the most distinguished combat records in the Army.

He was leading a charge up a hill against a pill box when his right arm was nearly blown off by a German rifle grenade, but he took a hand-grenade from his nearly severed right hand and threw it with his left hand destroying the bunker.

Despite his orders to to his men to continue the fight and refusal to be evacuated himself, his medic forced him down off the hill on a stretcher, and he was taken by ambulance to a field hospital, which, surprisingly enough, also treated another future Senator, Bob Dole, for a similar wound that very same month.

Nearly six decades later, I was part of a large proposal to manage the Maui High Performance Computing Center and was at the DC offices of a major defense contractor in Northern Virginia, where, naturally, the name Inouye came up.

One of the participants in the proposal room was a retired Admiral who was consulting for the contractor and he regaled us with the following story that had been recounted for him by the Senator, with whom he had been seated on the dais at a formal dinner.

The Admiral told us: "They took Lieutenant Inouye down off of the hill on a stretcher and when he got to the field hospital, a medic came up to the stretcher, looked at his wounds, asked if he needed more morphine, and then told the stretcher bearers to set him down in a group of soldiers lying on their stretchers next to the field hospital's tents. After being there a few minutes, and despite the pain, shock and morphine, he began to observe what was happening. There were three groups of wounded: the one to which he had been consigned, situated to the left of the entrance to a large tent, a second group very close to the tent's entrance, and a third group further away on the right side. He noticed that the group he was in was being visited by a medic periodically, asking if anyone needed more morphine, as they all had terrible wounds and some were no longer even conscious; the second group near the entrance would be visited by stretcher bearers every few minutes and rushed into the tent; the third group had only minor wounds, some sitting up chatting with each other. No one from his group was being taken into the tent, but there was a Chaplain there among them, talking very seriously to the wounded who could still talk. When the Chaplain came over to him, they talked a while. The Chaplain asked about his faith and prayed with him. Then, the Chaplain asked about his family back in Hawai'i, offering to write them for the Lieutenant, and finally got up to move on to another, asking: 'Is there anything else I can do for you?'.

To that, Lieutenant Inouye replied, 'I would appreciate it if you could get me moved from this group here to that group over there, by the tent entrance.' The Chaplain waved down a passing medic, who examined Lt. Inouye one more time, decided that he really could be moved to the treatment group, and together he and the Chaplain moved the stretcher into the other group. Almost immediately, the future Senator was rushed into the tent."

He lost his right arm during the desperate fight to save his life, during which they could not even give him general anesthesia for fear of losing him, but he lived to go on to be promoted to Captain, to receive a Distinguished Service Cross, to graduate from Law School (George Washington University) and to be elected to the House and then to the Senate. His DSC was later upgraded to a Medal of Honor.

Comment: I think this is a wonderful metaphor for Chaplains' Duties: move their charges from those who are doomed to die to the group that will live an eternal life, spiritually.