George Yancy Johnson, 88, served in three wars
George Yancy Johnson of Metuchen, who served in the Army during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, died Tuesday. He was 88.
Johnson's rich military biography included a covert landing in Normandy three weeks before D-Day, participation in the liberation of a concentration camp, observing the aftermath of Hiroshima, fighting in the bitter cold of Korea, witnessing atomic bomb tests in Nevada, and guarding the gold at Fort Knox.
As a civilian Johnson worked with the U.S. Secret Service, where his chief duty involved monitoring international money trading.
"He was proud to serve," said his son, Reggie Johnson, president of the Metuchen-Edison chapter of the NAACP. "One thing that made him really proud was that he was a commissioned officer at a time when there were few black commissioned officers."
Johnson joined the Army at a time when most of the military was segregated. Though he served with distinction, he was often reminded that as an African-American he did not have rights equal to his white Army buddies.
In an interview with the Home News Tribune published on Memorial Day in 2007, he recalled being told not to date German women when he was serving in Europe following World War II.
"I wondered what in hell ever made me put on a United States military uniform in such a damn Jim Crow'd outfit where people were so blind. But I liked the work and was moving up to first lieutenant," he said.
The humiliation continued when he returned to the United States, and drove with his wife Phyllis and infant son to California on the historic Route 66. He recalled stopping at a motel in Winslow, Ariz., looking for a room for the night.
"No coloreds'
"The woman in the office was curt. "No coloreds,' " he recalled. The family spent the night sleeping in their Studebaker automobile.
Stationed in northern California, where housing was segregated, his wife and son remained in the Los Angeles area, where they lived in an integrated apartment complex. There Tim Moore, who played the role of George "Kingfish" Stevens on the "Amos "n' Andy Show," occasionally baby-sat young Reggie.
While the program was condemned by the NAACP for the way it portrayed African-Americans —- and is no longer aired on commercial television —- Johnson and his wife were avid fans.
"We laughed at our Los Angeles neighbors every Thursday at 8:30 p.m.," he said.
Johnson was the oldest of five children, born May 21, 1919, to George Sr. and Mary Frances Johnson of Greensburg, Pa. The elder Johnson's father was a bell captain at the historic Rappe Hotel in Greensburg, where he died in a fire at age 46.
His mother raised five children on a dress-making business she operated in the basement of her home.
"She refused to take a nickel of relief," he recalled.
The owner of the Rappe Hotel gave Johnson a job as an elevator operator and bellman, while he was still in high school. After graduation, he became a butler on a horse farm owned by a wealthy Pittsburgh banker.
When the banker died in 1940, Johnson moved to Cleveland to live with his aunt, Nellie Hackney, the first black woman to work with the Cleveland police force. He got work making bricks but was bored with the routine.
At a Cleveland bus terminal, he and several friends saw a poster inviting volunteers to join the Canadian armed forces. Canada, a member of the British Commonwealth, had declared war on Germany Sept. 10, 1939, five days after the United States declared its neutrality.
Johnson's three white friends were accepted. Johnson said he was was told, "The Royal Canadian Air Force does not accept Negroes."
Sensing Johnson's anger, the sergeant said the Canadian army accepted Negroes, and Johnson would become the only black member of the Scots Fusiliers of Canada, the Canadian branch of a regiment established in Scotland in the 1600s.
The Fusiliers wore green and black kilts, and because of their ability to fight they were called "Ladies From Hell."
"The sight of a black man in a kilt convinced them I was serious about wanting to serve," Johnson said.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. military accepted soldiers who had fought with foreign armies, and Johnson became a sergeant in the 821st Amphibious Company.
Three weeks prior to D-Day French fishermen helped him sneak into the Normandy section of France, allowing him to do covert work.
In August 1945, after the fighting ceased, he helped round up citizens of the Munich suburb of Dachau, when Gen. Dwight Eisenhower insisted the civilian population see the inside of the Nazi concentration camp.
After the fighting in Europe ceased, he was assigned to the Pacific theater, and rode on a troop train that took him past Hiroshima after it was leveled by the atomic bomb.
His career continued in Korea, fighting what Korean War veterans call "The coldest war."
After retiring from the military in 1962, he joined the Secret Service. For 17 months he spent weekdays at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., and weekends at his home on Orchard Street in Metuchen. Funeral arrangements are being handled by Anderson Funeral Service of New Brunswick.
George Yancy Johnson, 88, served in three wars | Home News Tribune Online
George Yancy Johnson, 88, served in three wars
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman. 
