Descended from contract laborers from Portugal and Norway and a mechanic from Italy, he was born in the working-class neighborhood of Kakaʻako in Honolulu.
Bushnell's first novel, The Return of Lono, won the Atlantic Monthly's fiction award in 1956, at a time when most books about Hawaiʻi were written by outsiders.
In 1974, the Hawaiʻi Literary Arts Council presented him an Award for Literature, saying he "brought life to fact and reality to fiction.
"[4] His historical works include "Hawaii: A Pictorial History" (1969) with Joseph Feher and Edward Joesting, "A Walk Through Old Honolulu" (1975), and "A Song of Pilgrimage and Exile: The Life and Spirit of Mother Marianne of Molokai" (1980) with Sister Mary Laurence Hanley, O.S.F.
It remains the definitive study of how Native Hawaiians, having lived in isolation for centuries, were very nearly wiped out by exposure to newly introduced diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and leprosy.