John A. Burns

5. Emerging Leadership

F·I·V·E Emerging Leadership BUILDING A POLITICAL COALITION in Hawaii was a highly personal process, one for which Jack Burns was admirably suited. His unique combination of selflessness, determination, and patience enabled him to overcome a lack of charisma, particularly in the Japanese-American community.This was certainly one of the keys to his special relationship with the young veterans of the 100th and 442nd who were just entering politics. Burns, who seemed to value their personal success more than his own, would become their leader and mentor. But the process would not take place overnight. That Jack Burns was not a great public speaker did not mean that he was a poor communicator. Many locals treated people who were too articulate with suspicion. Jack Burns spoke the language of the common people of Hawaii. And while he might have appeared remote and colorless in a public forum, Burns was a different man in private. As Bud Smyser observed, “In a one-for-one relationship [Jack] was charming and likable. He was a different man in front of a group.” Burns was also very good with small groups, as we have seen from his association with the Police Contact Group and his political strategy sessions with Dr. Murai, Mits Kido, Jack Kawano, and Chuck Mau. Another small group that met with Jack Burns right after the end of the war was his Friday lunch club. This consisted of Bill Norwood, Tom Walker, his brother Ed, and two or three others who would rotate in and out.They first met at the Kewalo Inn, then at the Beaver Grill on Merchant Street. Jack Burns was not a loner. He made his decisions only after having looked at an issue through the eyes of trusted friends, an absolute requirement for a consensus builder. In 1946, Jack Burns began to take his message to the neighbor is78 Emerging Leadership 79 lands. In his first foray, he went to Kauai while the sugar strike was still in progress. One morning in Lihue, Burns walked into the farm supply store of Toshio Serizawa, a young independent businessman. As Serizawa recalled the meeting, Burns arrived, unannounced, and said: “I’m Jack Burns. I want to talk politics.” Not wanting to be seen talking with a Democratic Party organizer,Serizawa invited Burns to go into the back room. “Being a Democrat,” Serizawa explained, “was [for a man in his business] like having leprosy.” Serizawa recalled that Burns stayed in his store the entire morning, talking about the veterans who were coming back to their homes in Hawaii, about the kind of employment they would find, about the opportunities their children would enjoy. He also talked about the working men who had built Hawaii’s plantations. “Why do you think all these guys are on strike on the sugar plantation ?” Burns asked Serizawa. “What I read, Mr. Burns, in the newspapers,” Serizawa replied, “is that Communists are behind this sugar strike.” “It’s not communism,” Burns shot back, “it’s economics. . . . Don’t tell me these thousands of people in the plantations—your own brotherin -law, . . . your sister-in-law—are Communists.” Seeking to defuse the issue of communism, Burns went on to say, “There’s always a rotten apple someplace in the barrel, but don’t condemn all of them.”The overwhelming majority of the strikers, Burns told Serizawa, “are going to be Democrats.”Burns then went to the heart of the reason for his visit:“But we’ve got to get the independent people—nonplantation employees— involved. This is why I’ve come to talk to you.” Burns left Serizawa’s store that afternoon with a new recruit. Two years later, Serizawa went to Honolulu as a delegate to the 1948 territorial Democratic Convention.That same year, he ran for the Kauai board of supervisors, as a Democrat, and won. In this highly personal way, Burns and his friends began the geometric progression that would result in the creation of a new Democratic Party. “We knew,” Chuck Mau recalled , “that we wanted the young people to come in and take part because they were going to be the eventual leaders. We never thought that any one of the five [of us] would really become a strong enough leader in the community to lead the Party.” One of the major risks of a Democratic Party that was built on a base of plantation workers and veterans of the 100th and 442nd was that it [18...