Honolulu's airport opened in March 1927 as John Rodgers Airport. It was named for a naval aviator who had tried a record flight from California to Hawaii two years earlier but ditched just short of the islands. It was the first full airport built in the territory. The military took it over during World War Two and made it far bigger overall.
After the war, it returned to civil use as Honolulu International Airport, the main link between Hawaii and the mainland in the age of propeller planes. Jets arrived in 1959, the same year Hawaii became a state, and tourism grew from a small trickle into a mass market. In 1977, the airport gained the Reef Runway, the first major runway in the world built entirely offshore on a coral reef.
It sits on the reef partly for lack of room on land, and partly to move noise away from the city. For years it served as a backup Space Shuttle landing site. The airport was renamed in 2017 for Daniel K. Inouye, a Medal of Honor recipient who served Hawaii in the US Senate for fifty years. It remains Hawaii's main gateway today and the hub of Hawaiian Airlines.