Hawaiian Historical Society Annual Membership Meeting
Thursday, May 11, 2000 7:30 p.m.
Old Archives Building, Iolani Palace Grounds

John A. Burns, 25 Years After

A Slide/Lecture Presented by Dr. Dan Boylan

The Hawaiian Historical Society is pleased to present John A. Burns, 25 Years After, a slide-lecture program by Dr. Dan Boylan, professor of history at the University of Hawai'i - West O'ahu.

John A. Burns dominated Hawai'i's politics in the decades following World War II, leading the effort to resuscitate the Democratic Party. He helped devise the strategy that resulted in Hawai'i's becoming the fiftieth state and gave the new state its direction as governor from 1962 to 1974.

Little in his pre-war life would have indicated such political prominence. Burns came to Hawai'i in 1913 at the age of four, the son of an Army sergeant. His father abandoned his family, leaving Anne Scally Burns to rear Jack, his brother, and two sisters on the salary of a postmistress and the support of deep religious faith.

In 1934, Burns joined the police force, eventually rising to the rank of captain. During World War II, he became active with the Japanese-American community. At the war's end he successfully combined the returning Japanese-American war veterans with the militant post-war labor movement, creating a Democratic majority. In 1954, Burns' young political proteges won control of the territorial legislature. Then in 1956, Burns became the first Democratic delegate to Congress since 1932. With his election as governor in 1962, Democrats controlled the executive and legislative branches in Hawai'i as well as the congressional delegation to Washington, D.C. Forty years later the Burns coalition still holds power.

Dan Boylan, a former member of the Society's Board of Trustees and currently on the editorial board of The Hawaiian Journal of History, will discuss Burns's legacy for Hawai'i. In a new book, John A. Burns, The Man and his Times (University of Hawai'i Press), Boylan and T. Michael Holmes have looked at Burns's life and the powerful forces at work in post-World War II Hawai'i. This is the first scholarly treatment of Burns' life and adds to the story of the postwar generation begun by scholars like Lawrence Fuchs, Gavan Daws, George Cooper, and Tom Coffman. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the meeting at a 20 percent discount and Boylan will autograph copies.

Dan Boylan teaches history at the University of Hawai'i - West O'ahu and writes a column on politics for MidWeek. He has degrees from Kalamazoo College, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, and the University of Hawai'i.