Vernon O. Johnson

Vernon Oliver Johnson (July 21, 1920 – September 1, 1987) was an American diplomat.

After losing his crew in a B17-bomber crash and spending 18 months in V.A. hospitals, Johnson dedicated himself to solving global political tensions via face-to-face dialogue.

During the height of the Cold War, he traveled the world for 20 months with his wife, Anne Beckwith (Miller) Johnson and their eight children, promoting peace and world diplomacy through personal interaction.

Vernon Johnson was born July 21, 1920, in Spring Valley, Illinois.

Johnson was based at the Foggia Airfield Complex in Italy where he piloted 26 bombing raids on military installations in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Austria occasionally accompanied by the Tuskegee Airmen, a component of the 301st Bomb Group.

He graduated from Santa Barbara High School in 1937 and entered Santa Barbara State College (later to become UCSB) with a dual major in economics and political science.

He was in the National Guard from 1938 to 1940.

Johnson was performing onstage at the Lobero Theater on December 7, 1941, when news came of the Pearl Harbor bombing.

The following March he married Anne Beckwith Miller, in June graduated with a degree in economics, and in July joined the Army Air Corps.

Johnson was called to duty on February 5, 1943.

On November 25, 1944, he piloted "secret and confidential [radar] equipment" on an experimental run.

During the mission, engine fire caused them to return to Foggia.

Unable to land at Foggia, they were diverted to Iesi which resulted in the plane crashing and exploding.

Seven crewmen died, and Johnson suffered major injury including dislocated hips, broken ankles and a broken arm.

Flight Sergeant E.J. White, a witness from the South African Air Force on duty at the runway, reported "...the crash was undoubtedly attributable to the negligence on the part of the South African Air Force authorities in failing to lay a flare path for the emergency landing."

Johnson enrolled in the American Institute of Foreign Trade School (now Thunderbird School of Global Management) in 1948.

The school focused on World Diplomacy and Global Economics.

The following year, he was accepted in a graduate program at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico to study economics, foreign affairs, and law.

Returning to Santa Barbara following graduate school, he became a businessman and real estate investor.

By the mid-1950s, anti-Communist influence of Senator Joe McCarthy, aided by the House Un-American Activities Committee led to the establishment of the Doolittle Report.

In 1959, he bought a 1947 Ford bus that had been retired by the City of Santa Barbara and converted to a mobile home.

In September 1959, when Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied permission to visit Disneyland during his U.S. tour he was angry.

Headlines read "K Blows Top".

On the train ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Khrushchev was not interested in visiting with other dignitaries.

Public relations had a planned stop for him to shake hands with the mayor in Santa Barbara.

Johnson, his wife, and eight children were at the train station to greet the world leader.

Khrushchev looked out the train window, had eye contact with Johnson then stood, walked to the front of the train, disembarked and shook hands with the mayor, then walked 40–50 yards back to shake Johnson's hand and said (via interpreter), "You have a nice face".

Johnson replied that he would take his family to Russia; Khrushchev said Russia would welcome them.

The Times of London headline reported "All Change In Santa Barbara".

On March 3, 1960, Vernon, Anne, and his eight children began a 20-month world journey as an education in foreign affairs that Vernon asserted could not be learned in public schools.

Time-Life offered cameras, film and money to cover the trip, all refused by Johnson who sought independence abroad.

They left New York on the Italian liner, the MS Vulcania to Venice.

The bus went to Amsterdam, and as Johnson went north to retrieve it, the family lived in a brothel in Verona awaiting his return.

From Verona they visited the site of his B17 crash before heading to Naples where their luggage from the Vulcania had been dropped.

In Rome, the "Daily American" wrote "Vernon Johnson…is threatening to set the well-planned travel tour back 50 years" and quoted Johnson with saying that with the US/USSR summit in Paris derailed by 1960 U-2 incident, "I was tempted to send [Khrushchev] a cable telling him to quit lousing up our trip".

(See linked image to right of Report of Airport Accident declassified September 10, 1982).

Johnson was taken to a nearby Canadian hospital in a monastery for a five-week recovery from extensive burns, then spent 18 months in a Veterans Administration hospital for two amputations of his left leg, reconstruction to the right ankle, and multiple skin grafts.

He was promoted to captain and received the Purple Heart medal for his service.

He reported to Squadron 13 at the Santa Ana Army Air Base for testing followed by Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress pilot training at the Marfa Army Airfield and was subsequently assigned to the 15th Expeditionary Mobility Task Force, 32nd Squadron, 301st Operations Group.

After a brief assignment in Morocco, 1st Lieut.