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Hawaii’s World
NEXT Wednesday will mark 25 years since Gov. John A. Burns became the only 20th-century leader of Hawaii to die in office. Burns was
Hawaii’s best
governorI have known all Hawaii's governors since World War II. He was the best.
Early on I considered him just a nice guy who didn't have the executive background to be governor.
That held even through his service in Congress as the delegate from Hawaii who carried the statehood ball in for the touchdown. He served only the final three years of the 25-year statehood battle, which began in earnest in 1934. Others advanced the ball from deep in their own territory to something like the 10-yard line before he got it across.
What made Burns a success and the best of our governors was his single-minded dedication to egalitarianism. In the first half of the 20th century, Hawaii was far more "equal" for Caucasians and their elite Hawaiian allies than for the Asian segment of the population.
The ILWU organized to fight this on the labor front. Returning World War II veterans of Japanese ancestry had to fight for it in business. Burns, an ex-police officer who had helped the military government communicate with the Japanese community, brought them together in the Democratic Party. The rest is history.
Elected governor in 1962 after a 1959 defeat, he selected a cabinet with a finely tuned racial balance, nominated judges, and made other appointments in the same way.
He shocked the Caucasian establishment by inviting labor leaders to his official receptions at Washington Place --even some identified as former Communists.
When he was elected delegate to Congress in 1956 by defeating the publisher of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, he at first refused a victory interview with our reporter. "But now you are the delegate of all the people," our writer protested. Burns relented.
My late wife, Betty Smyser, had him booked for a radio interview two days after the 1959 election for governor that he and she had expected him to win. He showed up and spent no time whatever on recrimination.
Instead, he reiterated everything he had stood for in the campaign. No political make-over for this loser -- just a dogged determination to keep trying. This strong inner guidance is why I now compare him to Ronald Reagan.
Burns always stayed "just folks" by sitting on the Iolani Palace steps to chat with passers-by. He also was readily accessible on his daily walks to the Catholic cathedral.
He never seemed to get over his awe at the access his governorship gave him to famous people. When he met the queen mother of England on a stopover at Honolulu Airport, he just had to tell friends that little old Jack Burns had chatted with her.
The only time he got super-angry with me was when I wrote a two-sentence editorial wondering if his devout Catholicism would force him to veto a 1970 bill making Hawaii the first state to legalize abortion. It didn't, as I related in my column on March 21, but it wrenched his soul.
Though considered a liberal, he hand-picked a moderate, George Ariyoshi, to succeed him. He thus also started the state on its path to an ethnic rainbow of governors. A KGMB-TV special next Monday at 9 p.m. will tell some of the Burns story.
At 10 a.m. Wednesday, the anniversary of his death, there will be a wreath-laying at Punchbowl cemetery.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.