The future U.S. senator, her mother, and two of her siblings ultimately escaped Japan in the cramped steerage compartment of a Hawaii-bound ship, a journey made easier by the good fortune that Hirono's mother had been born in Hawaii, then a U.S. territory, and was thus determined to be a U.S. citizen. Without her 2013 proposal, Hirono told the Washington Post at the time, women fleeing hardships and abuse wouldn't be welcome to take refuge in America — meaning someone in the same situation as her own mom "never would have been able to come here."