Mazie Hirono

Early life and education[edit]

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.^[4] After finding plantation work difficult, the couple opened a bathhouse on River Street in Honolulu in 1928. The couple had a daughter, Laura Chie, in 1924, and a son, Akira.


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.^[5]


Mazie's father, Matabe, was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic who pawned even his wife's possessions for gambling money.^[5] Treated "like a slave" by her in-laws,^[5] 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."^[4] 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.^[4] "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."^[4][5]


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."^[4] 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.^[6] 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.^[7] Laura became a newspaper proofreader in 1961 and retired from the Hawaii Newspaper Agency in 1986; Roy became a Hawaiian Electric supervisor. Wayne drowned in 1978, aged 26. Mazie's grandfather Hiroshi died in 1989, and her grandmother Tari died in 2000 at age 99.^[4][8]


Raised in Honolulu, Hirono became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1959, the year Hawaii became a state.^[9] She attended Kaʻahumanu Elementary and Koko Head Elementary Schools. She graduated from Kaimuki High School, which at the time had a predominantly Japanese American student body. Hirono then enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in psychology in 1970.^[10] She later attended Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., where she obtained her juris doctor degree in 1978. Hirono then returned to Honolulu, where she practiced law.^[11]