First elected lawmaker dies
Date: Sunday, March 25 @ 23:04:12 CDT
Topic: Vol. XVI, No. 09
HONOLULU – Peter A. Aduja, the first Filipino-American to hold a major elective office in the United States, died recently while vacationing in Las Vegas. He was 87. Aduja was elected in 1954 to the Territorial House of Representatives as a Republican from Hilo.
He served one two-year term and went to work for the Department of Attorney General before returning to politics as a state representative from 1966-74. Aduja was also elected as a delegate to the 1968 Constitutional Convention. He was a native of Salindig, Vigon in Ilocos Sur. He came to Hawaii at age 8 in 1928 and grew up in the Big Island in Hakalau, where his father worked in a sugar plantation for a $1 daily wage. He was a resident of Kane’ohe, Hawai’i prior to his death.
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