I am new to this world so please forgive my ignorance. OK, so one day after I planted 2 Japanese Maples (Crimson Queens) my new neighbor cut down all of the trees on his property and suddenly flooded my backyard with massive amounts of sunlight. My Japanese Maples require part sun, but for the last month have been getting about 8+ hours of it. The result is they are dying quickly, so I need to transplant them. My only other location is a bit of an oddity with regards to sunlight. Let me explain:

There is a strip of land in front of my porch that gets exactly 55 minutes of sun a day (I've timed it). As I understand it this is far too little sun exposure for most plants that don't thrive in similar conditions. However, my wife planted some full-sun boxwoods there in late spring and so far they have performed miraculously well. When she planted them they were the size of my fist; now they are twice as big as a basketball. For a plant that loves the sun this makes no sense to me at all. Especially since my hostas (which are planted in that same location) are doing wonderfully (while the hostas near the Japanese Maples that are in full sun are practically dead already).

So my question is: is this a good location for my Maples? The sunlight is in the very early morning (just after sunrise) and is gone 55 minutes later (complete shade the rest of the day, and a very cool location compared to the rest of my property). If the sun-loving boxwoods and shade-loving hostas are doing so well, what can I expect from the Japanese Maples?

Thank you in advance.