It has been 10 years since the passing of U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye. One way to understand the Senator’s legacy is through his Senate press releases, which have recently been digitized by the UH Mānoa Library. The press releases, which document nearly 50 years of the Senator’s steadfast advocacy for Hawaiʻi in the U.S. Congress, add to the 64,000+ pages of archival material on legislative accomplishments, Native Hawaiian issues, Japanese Latin American Internment, and Kahoʻolawe that have already been digitized.
In addition to documenting issues of local, national, and international significance, the press releases are also a great resource for tracking federal funding for Hawaiʻi in sectors such as defense, agriculture, natural resource management, education, healthcare, social services, transportation, shipping, infrastructure, arts and culture, and more.
Below is a selection of press releases from the collection:
On Senate passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, September 22, 1965 
Requesting President Nixon’s assistance in resolving the 1971 West Coast ILWU strike, July 23, 1971 
On the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, August 8, 1973 
On the Senate Watergate Committee hearings, August 8, 1973 
On Iran-Contra indictments, March 16, 1988 
On committee approval of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), August 2, 1990 
On committee approval of Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), August 2, 1990 
On the return of Kahoʻolawe to the State of Hawaiʻi, [May 7, 1994] 
On the return of Kahoʻolawe to the State of Hawaiʻi, [May 7, 1994] 
On the invasion of Iraq, March 17, 2003 
On Senate passage of the Affordable Care Act, December 24, 2009 
On Senate passage of the Affordable Care Act, December 24, 2009 
On Senate passage of the Affordable Care Act, December 24, 2009
One of the most compelling aspects of this collection is its chronological scope. The period between 1963 and 2012 saw tremendous transformation in Hawaiʻi, the nation, and the world. Senator Inouye’s press releases accordingly reflect hope, resolve, disquiet, sometimes frustration–but never despair. The Senator’s commitment to bipartisanship and belief in democracy through these many years are reassuring reminders, especially in these last years when so much has seemed uncertain.
Mahalo to the Daniel K. Inouye Institute and to the library’s current DKI project team: Donovan Balderama, Daniel Ishimitsu, Alisa Kwok, Wen Lin, Jill Seapker, and Dawn Sueoka.
This effort is part of an ongoing initiative, supported by the Daniel K. Inouye Institute, to digitize portions of the Senator’s archives. In the next few years, we will add to our digital collections Senator Inouye’s newsletters, all of his speeches, and records from the Senator’s years in the U.S. House (1959-1963), which document Hawaiʻi’s transition to statehood.
How to access the press releases
The best way to access the press releases and other digitized material from the Senator Daniel K. Inouye Papers is through the collectionʻs online finding aid. Archival finding aids provide contextual information about a collection and its major “series” (large categories of documents), as well as a hierarchical listing of the collectionʻs contents. The Inouye collection is organized according to the functions of the Senator’s Washington, D.C., and Honolulu offices.
Navigate the collection by exploring the nested list on the right side of the interface. Digitized files will appear as icons in red. Chronological press releases can be found within the Administrative files series; Washington, D.C. office subseries; Public Relations sub-subseries.
You can download all press releases at once using the link at the top of this page.
A note on the preparation of the files
In the preparation of these documents, emphasis was placed on enabling researchers to reliably search the content of the press releases themselves.
Material was digitized at 400 PPI in 24-bit color.
In preparation for OCR correction, PDFs created before September 2022 include image preprocessing such as text straightening and page rotation by ABBYY FineReader. PDFs created after September 2022 have these features turned off.
Document zoning was manually corrected using ABBYY FineReader.
All text was recognized using ABBYY FineReader.
OCR was manually corrected using the ABBYY FineReader Verification function, except in the following cases:
- Non-press release material included as attachments, e.g., Congressional Record remarks, newspaper clippings, correspondence, forms was not corrected
- Text in document headers, footers (e.g., fax transmittal information) was not corrected
- 1963-1964 folders where pages were too faded or carbon copy text was too blurry to produce editable OCR were not corrected
Archives & Manuscripts Department 