After the war, he returned as the assistant naval administrator, later advancing to become the naval administrator for all of the Northern Marianas, the Bonin Islands and the Volcano Islands; and was instrumental in engineering the surrender of the Japanese holdouts on Anatahan. When we lived there in the 1990s, Joe Guerrero and Scott Russell, then both working at the Historic Preservation Office, visited Captain Johnson at his home in Florida, and returned with artifacts that he acquired from the holdouts. Today, unless I am mistaken, I think they are still at HPO, if not the museum.
The reason I am writing this letter is because I recently learned that Captain Johnson is still alive, but in poor health. I had regular contact with the captain back when we lived on Saipan. He helped me with my research on the war, and also gave me a feel for what it was like in the islands after the war, during both the naval administration and the days of the Trust Territory.
Captain Johnson truly loved the islands and the people who lived there. After he retired as naval administrator, he returned to the islands again during the Trust Territory days as a civilian. I think when he left the islands for the last time he had put in a total of 14 years. When we lived on Saipan, whenever I mentioned his name to locals their eyes would light up. I never met anybody from those days who knew Captain Johnson who didn’t have a kind word for him.
I think what would really be nice would be if somehow the people of the CNMI could come up with some way of recognizing Captain Johnson, and perhaps others like him who loved the islands and did so much on a limited budget to help the people of those islands prosper after the devastation of war.
BRUCE M. PETTY
New Plymouth, New Zealand
