Fong, Hiram

He studied at public schools, in 1930 he graduated from the University of Hawaii in Manoa , in 1935 - from the Harvard Law School . In the same year he was admitted to the bar and from 1935 to 1938 he was engaged in private legal practice in Honolulu, was the deputy prosecutor of the city and the Honolulu district ^[2] .

During the Second World War from 1942 to 1945 he served in the rank of major in the position of . For twenty years he was in reserve, retired with the rank of colonel.

In 1938-1954 he was in the Legislative Assembly of the territory of Hawaii, for four years he was his vice speaker and six years - speaker. In 1950, he was elected Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Convention of the Territory of Hawaii. Chairman of the board of directors and president of several insurance and financial companies, has been growing bananas on his plantation.

With the acquisition of state status by Hawaii in 1959, he was elected to the US Senate and held this position from August 21, 1959 ^[3] until January 3, 1977, having refused another re-election in 1976. Being the seventh of eleven children in a poor family of his illiterate parents (Fong's father, immigrating from China, worked under bonded conditions on a sugar plantation, and his mother was a servant in a rich house), for 18 years in the Senate he attracted attention as one of the first Americans of Asian descent in the upper house of Congress, as well as the only American of Chinese descent and the only Republican to ever represent Hawaii in the Senate. Consisted of influential committees - Legal and public procurement. In the 1960s, he stood out among his party members by supporting legislation to ensure civil rights, but he always took a position in support of rising military spending. In the early 1970s, he firmly supported President Nixon’s policies and the Vietnam War. ^[4]

In 1964 and 1968, the first Asian American to enter the fight to nominate him from the Republican Party in the presidential election ^[5] .

After leaving politics, he returned to entrepreneurship, was the president of Finance Enterprises, Ltd. He lived in Kahaluu in Hawaii, where he died of kidney failure on August 18, 2004.

In 1938 he married Ellyn Lo, four children grew up in their family: Hiram Jr. (born 1939), Rodney (born 1948), twins Mary-Ellen and Marvin (born 1948). Unable to join Honolulu's law firm due to his Chinese descent, Fong became the co-founder of the bureau in 1946, known for his interethnic composition of partners: Fong (Chinese descent), Miho (Japanese), Choi (Korean) and Robinson (white native of Hawaii) ^[6] .

• Hiram Fong: A Featured Biography . United States Senate. Date of appeal September 9, 2017.