In this week’s Friday Know-It-All, Editor Ira explores the life of the first Asian American U.S. senator, Hiram Fong.

When people learn I’m a professional trivia writer, they tend to ask a lot of the same questions. “Is that actually a job someone can have?” “What’s your favorite all-time trivia question?” “Is your wife rich or something?” “What’s the hardest question you ever wrote?”

I’ll answer the first three questions at the end of this article and use the last one as a convenient segue into today’s Friday Know-It-All topic. A lot of folks assume that a trivia writer’s goal is to stump the players. On the contrary, in a good night’s game of trivia, most of the answers will be gettable for most of the people in the room. Some of them will just be gettable for a few more people than others. If we wrote questions looking to stump people, it would stop being fun for all but the most hardcore of trivia nerds.

The challenge for a trivia writer is finding answers that fall somewhere in between obvious and obscure. For example, “Who was the first Asian American politician to be a major U.S. party’s presidential nominee?” would be too obvious. On the other end of the spectrum, “Who was the first Asian American politician to receive a delegate vote to be a major U.S. party’s presidential nominee?” would be far too obscure.

Well, hey, would you look at that. Seems I’ve come to a convenient (if not graceful) segue into today’s Friday Know-It-All topic. Senator Hiram Fong is indeed too obscure an answer for a regular night of trivia, but he’s just right for the FKIA.

Hiram Fong was born in Honolulu in 1906, the seventh of eleven children of two Chinese immigrants. His mother worked as a maid and his father was an indentured servant on a sugar plantation. Hiram was put to work early, harvesting feed for cattle at age 4, shining shoes by 7, and graduating to fishing, crabbing, food delivery, and golf caddying.

Young Hiram’s extraordinary work ethic served him well, securing him a space at Harvard Law School after he graduated the University of Hawaiʻi a year early. He held down multiple jobs at a time throughout his schooling, taking years-long pauses between studies to save up for more. He received his Doctorate of Jurisprudence from Harvard in 1935 and returned to Honolulu to work as a deputy attorney for the city.

Fong co-founded the successful law practice of Fong, Miho, Choy and Robinson in 1938, partnering with lawyers of Japanese, Korean, and Hawaiian descent in order to reflect the city’s diverse cultures. That same year he married his wife Ellyn and not only won his first election to Hawaiʻi’s Territorial House of Representatives, but pulled together a bipartisan coalition that voted him Speaker of the House. He turned 31 that year.

That knack for bipartisanship would be one of Fong’s greatest assets in his political career. Although he was a staunch lifelong Republican, he fostered close working relationships with colleagues of all stripes. Harkening back to his childhood on the sugar plantation, he was instrumental in passing the “Little Wagner Act,” legislation that allowed Hawaiian agricultural workers to unionize for the first time.

The attack on Pearl Harbor put Fong’s political career on hold. He entered the United States Army Air Corps in 1942, reaching the rank of Major as a Judge Advocate during WWII. He went on to spend 20 years as a reserve officer and retired from service as a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.

After losing his House seat in 1954, Fong turned to finance, quickly building a reputation (and a fortune) as one of the island’s most visible real estate and investment players. Politics, though, was in his blood. Fong was a major backer of Hawaiian statehood throughout the 1950s, arguing before the U.S. congress and serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1952. Those efforts came to fruition in 1959. Hawaiʻi became a state and Fong won election as one of its first two United States senators, as well as the first Asian American elected to the U.S. Senate.

Throughout his senate career, Fong was a strong advocate for civil rights and Hawaiian infrastructure. He pushed hard to get Honolulu’s H-1 freeway built and helped to establish the University of Hawaiʻi’s East-West Center, focused on improving diplomatic relationships between the U.S. and Pacific nations. Other signature achievements included legislation to safeguard voting rights for ethnic minorities and to remove U.S. immigration barriers for Asian citizens.

Fong’s work on behalf of Hawaiʻi made him consistently popular at home, even as the state’s political leanings began to tilt decidedly Democratic. In 1964 the Hawaiian delegation to the Republican National Convention nominated Hiram Fong for president as a “favorite son” candidate. The nomination was mostly symbolic, of course — nobody was going to derail a charisma train like Barry Goldwater — but it was history-making nonetheless.

Hiram Fong retired from the U.S. Senate in 1977. He turned his focus to his business empire, which fell on hard times and internal discord in the ’80s. In 1988, he launched the popular attraction Senator Fong’s Plantation and Gardens on a 725-acre Oahu banana plantation. The banana fields were transformed into a tourist-friendly botanical garden featuring five tropical zones, each named for one of the presidents Fong served under. It’s still open today, although it’s now a private wedding and event space.

Hiram Fong died in 2003 at the age of 97, leaving a legacy as one of the true foundational figures in his state’s history and, to this day, the only Republican senator ever to represent Hawaiʻi.

And that’s all there is to know this week! — Editor Ira

Answers to the questions from the top of the article:

1. Yes! Or at least it’s a job that I, specifically, can have.

2. I will never tell you, but the answer to it is “Scott Skindeep.”

3. No, but she does have good insurance.