Gavan Daws is an American writer, historian and filmmaker residing in Honolulu, Hawaii.
His best-known works are Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, in print since 1968; Holy Man: Father Damien of Molokai, the biography of a nineteenth-century missionary priest to Hawaii who served leprosy sufferers, and who has recently been canonized; and Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific.
Daws co-produced and co-directed Angels of War: The People of Papua New Guinea and World War II, which won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Documentary.
His other work includes song lyrics and a stage play with music and choreography.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, and served as the Pacific member of the UNESCO Commission on the Scientific and Cultural History of Humankind.