August 24, 1959 Hiram L. Fong
Born in Honolulu the son of poor Chinese immigrants, Hiram L. Fong is sworn in as Hawaii’s first U.S. Senator, becoming the first Asian American elected to the chamber.
Fong was the seventh of 11 children born to Lum Fong and Lum Fong Shee, both immigrants from China’s Kwantung Province. Both of Fong’s parents worked as indentured laborers on a sugar plantation, earning $12 a month between them. To help support his large family, Hiram worked as a shoe shine boy, newspaper seller, and golf caddy. He attended Kalihi Waena Grammar School and, later, McKinley High School, a large public school in Honolulu. He worked his way through Harvard Law School. He graduated, in 1935, broke but thoroughly educated. He later founded Honolulu’s first multiracial law firm before embarking on a successful career in politics.
The only Republican senator ever elected from the state, he defended President Richard Nixon’s Vietnam policies, and, according to the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art & Archives, saw himself as an Asian American spokesman. “I feel sometimes they think I am their senator,” he once said. “I try to interpret America to them and to interpret them to America.”
He served with distinction in the U.S. Senate until his retirement in 1977.
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