Irene Inouye, 71, Fund-Raising Champion of Japanese-Americans, Dies (Published 2020)
- ️Mon Apr 13 2020
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She headed two major foundations, established a Japanese-American museum and, the widow of a senator, quietly helped lift Detroit out of bankruptcy.
April 13, 2020
Irene Hirano Inouye, who established the nation’s premier Japanese-American museum, in Los Angeles, and who, as a philanthropic leader, helped leverage hundreds of millions of dollars to lift Detroit out of bankruptcy in 2014, died on April 7 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 71.
Her death was announced by the U.S.-Japan Council, of which she was president. Her daughter, Jennifer Hirano, said the cause was leiomyosarcoma, a rare form of cancer that affects muscle tissue.
The widow of Senator Daniel K. Inouye, the long-serving Hawaii Democrat who died in 2012, Ms. Inouye (pronounced in-NO-ay) was a third-generation Japanese-American and a powerhouse fund-raiser for social and cultural causes.
She announced in January that she would be retiring from the council, a Washington-based nonprofit that she and Senator Inouye started to strengthen personal relations between Japanese and Americans.
In 2011, she co-founded an initiative that raised more than $50 million from corporations in both America and Japan to help Japan recover from the earthquake and tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people.
Before joining the council, she was president and founding chief executive of the Japanese American National Museum. During her 20-year tenure, she transformed it from a debt-ridden, grass-roots organization in an old warehouse near Little Tokyo in Los Angeles into a state-of-the-art museum. She led fund-raising campaigns that brought the museum $65 million over the years and 65,000 members. It became an official affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution.