Carving history: Junior New Jersey senator discovers late Hawaiʻi’s Senator Inouye’s name on bottom of desk drawer

The legacy of late longtime Hawaiʻi US Sen. Daniel Inouye came up during a nationally televised CNN “State of the Union” interview of Andy Kim, the new junior US senator from New Jersey and the first Korean-American elected to the US Senate.

In a Sunday morning interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, Kim said that out of 100 desks on the US Senate floor, he was given the one that had been occupied by Hawaiʻi’s Senator Inouye, who died at age 88 in December 2012.

Kim told Bash that he was examining his newly assigned desk on the US Senate floor and saw a number of names of former senators carved there.

“One name stood out to me, Senator Inouye from Hawaiʻi,” he said. “Senator Inouye . . . was somebody that, you know, I grew up watching. I mean, you know that we haven’t had very many Asian-Americans in the US Senate. I’m only the 10th ever. I’m the first from the East Coast of America.”

Kim noted that Inouye served in the Senate for nearly 50 years and was a Medal of Honor recipient for his service during World War II.

“The idea that I get to use his desk was just so powerful and just like, really, one of those moments where it hits you, you’re like, this is happening. I’m doing this work. So, just a lot of history to comprehend right now.”

Inouye was the first Japanese-American elected to Congress. Kim was 30 years old at the time of Inouye’s passing.

Born in Boston and raised in South Jersey, Kim is a Democrat. He served in the US House of Representatives from 2019 to this year. His district included southern and central New Jersey, a district that has twice voted for President-elect Donald Trump.

Bash asked Kim how Democrats can work with the new president?

“I’ve learned how to be able to engage and also try to build coalitions,” Kim said. “For instance, my district in New Jersey was getting crushed by the opioid crisis. Fentanyl has been a major problem. And, as someone who has worked in national security, and we get so concerned about, you know, challenges abroad, but right here at home, over 100,000 Americans (are) losing their lives in a mental health crisis that we are facing, especially for our youth.”

“These are issues in national security before a lot of bipartisan concerns about American global competitiveness, about the United States and China, what that means going forward.”

Bash showed a picture of Kim cleaning up trash in the US Capitol after the Jan. 6, 2021, riots there. “Are you worried that the history of that day has already been rewritten by Donald Trump and his supporters?” she asked.

“Yes, I worry about this a lot,” Kim said. “We have this great motto ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ ‘Out of Many, One.’ And, I’ve often thought through like, how does that happen? You know, there’s a missing verb there. How do you get from many to one? And, it’s so important that we have a shared sense of this country: its history, its definition. But we’re losing sight of this idea that we’re part of something bigger than all of us.”

“When I see what happened that day, I mean, we saw with our own eyes, those of us that were in Congress; the American people saw; people all over the world saw it; and the idea that it’s being papered over and that people that attacked the Capitol rioted, that they’re being thought of as ‘liberators,’ as you known, ‘prisoners’ now that they’re being unfairly treated. We are a nation of rule of law, and it just does break my heart.”

“We should commit ourselves to never letting that happen again,” he said.

Trump’s inauguration is set for Jan. 20.

Kim’s parents immigrated from Korea to the United States 50 years ago. His father was a geneticist, and his mother was a nurse. He studied political science at the University of Chicago before attending Magdalen College, Oxford. He worked as a civilian adviser at the US State Department, serving in Afghanistan under the administration of former President Barack Obama. He served three terms in the House from 2019 to 2024.

Kim’s election to the US Senate is “beyond anything that my family could imagine,” he told Bash. “My mom called, you know, we talked the night of my swearing in, and she was just in tears about just how emotional it was for her. So, it’s a lot to process, but I’m proud of this moment.”

Kim said his hero is Sen. Inouye, who served with ‘E’ company of the 442 Regimental Combat Team, a group consisting entirely of Americans of Japanese ancestry. In combat, Inouye lost his arm charging a series of machine gun nests in Italy. His actions during that battle earned him the Medal of Honor.

Inouye was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he became the first and only US senator to be the recipient of both the Medal of Freedom and the Medal of Honor.