Daniel Inouye: “it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak on the 35th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and on the…”

“it is a pleasure to have this opportunity to speak on the 35th anniversary of the Wilderness Act of 1964 and on the establishment of the National Wilderness Preservation System. When the Wilderness Act was being debated on the Senate floor in 1963, I was a freshman Senator. Following Hawaii's admission to the union in 1959, I served one partial and one full term in the House of Representatives and then was elected to the Senate in 1962. So, in early April of 1963, I was a 39-year-old freshman Senator in the first year of my first term in the Senate. The Wilderness Act, however, was not new to the Senate when it came to the floor in April 1963. The first wilderness proposal was introduced late in the 84th Congress in 1956. Following extensive hearings, testimony, debate and revisions, a wilderness bill was passed by a wide margin in the Senate on September 6, 1961. However, it was not until my freshman year in the Senate that we passed a wilderness bill that ultimately went on to become law the next year in 1964.”