The Honorable Patricia Saiki

U.S. Representative from Hawaii (January 3, 1987-January 3, 1991)

Patricia Saiki’s path to Capitol Hill began in Hawaii, where she was born to Japanese-American parents in 1930. While raising five children, she worked as a teacher, union organizer, and state legislator before winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1986. She was the first Republican and second woman to represent Hawaii in Congress since statehood. In this interview, she discusses her long political career, providing insight into Hawaiian state politics, her legislative strategies as an elected representative at the state and federal level, and the role of women in American politics during the 1970s and 1980s. 

In this oral history, Saiki recalls her family’s experience during World War II, when the federal government forced Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans into internment camps—including her cousin in California. She describes her initial career as a teacher and her efforts to organize a union in her workplace, which she cited as her first step toward running for office. She went on to serve nearly a decade and a half as a member of Hawaii’s state assembly and state senate, where she contributed to the growth of the Hawaiian Republican Party, added equal rights protections to the state constitution, and secured funding for women’s education, health, and safety programs.

Saiki provides a firsthand account of her time on Capitol Hill in the 1980s, including her role in convincing her Republican colleagues to support the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which authorized financial payments to survivors of the federal government’s wartime internment program. She discusses her work to modify regulations on the Hawaiian fishing industry while on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee as well as her travels abroad representing the United States in China, Tonga, and Japan. In addition, she speaks about her tenure as head of the Small Business Administration under President George H. W. Bush after her unsuccessful Senate campaign in 1990. Throughout this interview, Saiki emphasizes the importance of women in politics, demonstrating the ways women Members worked together and added new perspectives to debates that ultimately shaped legislation.