My 1943 Mint Set
Private
Updated:
4/12/2026
Views: 31
The young man on the left is Daniel Inouye as a young soldier and a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who fought in Italy. On April 21, 1944 he suffered a near tramatic amputation of his right arm from a mortar round and machine gun fire. His action that resulted in a German machine gun nest being taken out, and for the Mr. Inouye received the Medal of Honor.
The young second generation Japanese lad spent considerable time in Army Hospitals where he met another gravely wounded soldier who fought in Italy and was wound just a few thousand yards from where he was. That other soldier was Bob Dole, and the two became friends long before they were both graduated from law school and elected to the United States Senate.
When I heard the story, I knew there would come a day I would write these comments associated with some kind of numismatic endeavor. Daniel Inouye was also a coin collector of sorts. He carried two silver dollars in his breast pocket for luck. Just a matter of months before the action that took him out of the war he was hit again with machine gun fire. The bullet that hit him, hit him on his breast pocket and the two silver dollars stopped the round; saving his life. As much as many of us admire Morgan dollars, Senator Inouye admires, at least two of them, more.
Sometimes you just have to start a set to be able to tell a particular story. I stand here guilty as charged. Senator Dole was my Senator when I lived in Kansas, and his best friend was a Senator from Hawaii, one a Democrat and one a Republican. There's a lesson here, one I wish could be learned today.
This set has its genesis in the 1980s, but was started on President's Day, 2026.
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