In a literary world in which Hawai'i had been defined by outsiders like Jack London, Mark Twain and James A. Michener, O.A. "Ozzie" Bushnell brought a local understanding of place to a national audience.
Combining his background in microbiology and medical history with a finely developed literary touch, Bushnell wrote a series of novels that told Hawai'i stories with insight and understanding.
Bushnell was born in Kaka'ako in 1913 and earned a degree in science from the University of Hawai'i before doing his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.
A teacher at the UH School of Medicine by day, Bushnell used his free time to indulge his interest in creative writing. His first novel, "The Return of Lono," won the Atlantic Monthly's fiction award in 1956.
Bushnell's next four novels examined aspects of Hawai'i history of which little had been written or understood: "Molokai," about the colony at Kalaupapa to isolate Hansen's disease; "Kaaawa," about the impact of introduced diseases on Hawaiians in the 1850s; and "Stone of Kannon" and "Water of Life," about the first contract laborers from Japan.
Bushnell, who advocated the use of pidgin as well as standard English, is still remembered as a positive early influence on the development of local literature.
His last book, "Gifts of Civilization: Germs and Genocide in Hawaii," on which Bushnell had worked for more than 50 years, is considered the definitive study on how and why the Native Hawaiian population was ravaged by diseases brought by outsiders.
Bushnell died in 2002 at the age of 89.
