Mazie Hirono

The couple had a daughter, Laura Chie, in 1924, and a son, Akira.

After finding plantation work difficult, the couple opened a bathhouse on River Street in Honolulu in 1928.

In 1939, Tari returned to Japan with the teenaged Laura and Akira; Hiroshi remained in Hawaii to run the bathhouse for two more years before joining his family in 1941.

Laura felt out of place in Japan as one of the many Nisei Japanese Americans who emigrated with their returning Issei parents (barred from US citizenship or land ownership) before World War II and during the Great Depression.

But although her brother returned to Hawaii after the war, she remained in Japan and married a veterinarian, Hirono Matabe, in 1946.

Laura moved with her husband to southern Fukushima, and had three children, Roy, Mazie, and Wayne.

Mazie, the middle child, was the only surviving daughter.

Mazie's father, Matabe, was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic who pawned even his wife's possessions for gambling money.

Mazie Keiko Hirono (Japanese name:, Hirono Keiko; born November 3, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Hawaii since 2013.

Mazie Hirono was born on November 3, 1947, in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan to Laura Chie Satō, a Japanese American, and Hirono Matabe, a Japanese veteran of World War II.

Mazie's maternal grandfather, Hiroshi Satō, immigrated to Hawaii to work on a sugar plantation at the age of 16; her grandmother, Tari Shinoki, immigrated to Hawaii as a picture bride.

Treated "like a slave" by her in-laws, Mazie's mother finally left the abusive marriage in 1951.

Laura later recounted her point of decision: "My brother sent money to buy a school uniform for my son. My husband took the money, went to town and never came back home. It was getting closer to the start of school, so I went to look for him. I found out he had ordered an overcoat for himself with the money. He didn't need an overcoat in the spring. That's when I made up my mind to leave."

After telling her in-laws she was going to take her children to school in her hometown, Laura left the house, never to return.

Selling her clothes to pay the rail fare, she and the children moved back to her parents' home.

Laura said, "My husband never came around once; my parents were supportive and took all of us in. My mother gave us money. I guess it all boils down to love."

The Satō-Hirono family decided to return to Hawaii, but under the U.S. quota system Tari and Hiroshi, as Japanese nationals without American citizenship or professional status, could not go with Laura, an American citizen.

Thus the family was separated, with three-year-old Wayne staying behind with his grandparents and Laura returning to Honolulu on her own with Mazie and Roy in March 1955.

After two years of hard work, she brought her parents and youngest son to Hawaii in 1957.

"She determined that she had to get away [from her husband]...she wanted to put thousands of miles between them", Hirono said of her mother.

"That took a lot of courage. I always tell my mom there is nothing I can do—hard as it is to be in politics...harder than what she did."

After first living with Mazie's uncle Akira, the family moved into a rooming house on Kewalo Street in Honolulu with one room, one table, three chairs and one bed.

Laura recalled, "Mazie and Roy slept on the bed. I slept on the floor with a futon. The landlady was so nice. The rent was $35, but she charged us less because I didn't have a job."

Laura began working for the Hawaii Hochi as a typesetter and also three nights a week for a catering company.

Mazie worked in the school cafeteria and had a paper route.

Though money was tight and the family was forced to move often, Laura kept them together.

Mazie recalled that she and her brother used to get a dime once or twice a week from their mother.

"We both had baseball piggy banks. My older brother spent all his dimes but I saved mine. But one day I came home and the dimes were gone. My mother had to use it to buy food."

Hirono never saw her father again, and he has since died.

Hirono also served as a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives from 1981 to 1995 and as Hawaii's tenth lieutenant governor from 1994 to 2002, under Ben Cayetano.

She was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor of Hawaii in 2002, defeated by Republican Linda Lingle in the general election.

Hirono is the first elected female senator from Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, the first U.S. senator born in Japan, and the nation's first Buddhist senator.

She considers herself a non-practicing Buddhist and is often cited with Hank Johnson as the first Buddhist to serve in the United States Congress.

She is also the third woman to be elected to Congress from Hawaii (after Patsy Mink and Pat Saiki).

A member of the Democratic Party, Hirono previously served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2007 to 2013.

In 2012, Hirono was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the retirement of Daniel Akaka.

Hirono won the election, defeating Lingle in a landslide, 63% to 37%.

She was sworn in on January 3, 2013, by Vice President Joe Biden.

Hirono was the only person of Asian ancestry serving in the U.S. Senate from 2013 until 2017, when senators Tammy Duckworth and Kamala Harris were sworn in, representing Illinois and California, respectively.

Although Brian Schatz is Hawaii's senior senator because he joined the Senate a week before Hirono, following the death of Daniel Inouye, Hirono's three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives make her the dean, or longest-serving member overall, of Hawaii's congressional delegation.