Tom Coffman

Tom Coffman is an independent researcher, writer, and producer. He graduated from the William Allen White School, Kansas University, with a Bachelor in Journalism. The managing editor of the Honolulu Advertiser loaned Coffman plane fare to come to Hawaii, where he became state government reporter for the Advertiser. He moved to the Honolulu Star-Bulletin two years later and became political reporter and bureau chief. In 1972, he wrote Catch a Wave, a widely read account of Hawaii politics and the turmoil of that period. A year later, he left newspaper reporting to work as an independent writer and media producer.

His productions increasingly incorporated historic themes. Under the guidance of the legendary Hawaiian writer John Dominis Holt, he began to integrate a chronology of the development of Hawaii, which led to the television documentaries O Hawaii: From Settlement to Kingdom and Nation Within.

Tom Coffman’s work has won national awards for production of video, film, interactive media, and multi-image. Ganbaré, about the early wartime experiences of Japanese Americans, was selected Best Film by a Hawaii Filmmaker at the 1995 Hawaii International Film Festival. Three of his books, Nation Within, The Island Edge of America, and I Respectfully Dissent, received Ka Palapala Pookela Awards for Excellence in Nonfiction from the Hawaii Book Publishers Association. Coffman also received the Hawaii Award for Literature, the highest recognition given by the state of Hawaii for outstanding literary achievement. Other PBS films dealt with America’s annexation of Hawaii, the onset of World War II, and the martyrdom of Ninoy Aquino.