James Johnson chose the Army because he had a brother lost overboard a ship in 1938. Johnson was the last of 11 children. He had five brothers and five sisters. He went to the university and majored in chemical engineering. He was drafted in 1943. He told the draft board he should not be deferred. He was assigned to the engineer battalion for the 106th Division [Annotator's Note: 106th Infantry Division]. Most of the men in the 106th had been deferred because of the ASTP [Annotator's Note: generally referred to just by the initials ASTP; a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers] or another association they were with. They stopped the ASTP because they needed more men in the fighting forces. They were stationed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. They went through basic and advanced training. Johnson went to West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York]. Johnson saw a man from his platoon while in Wisconsin. They had been in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] where the 106th got clobbered.

James Johnson went to basic training for three months. Then he went to advanced individual training for two months. He was selected to go to school. He went to a pre-West Point assignment in Pennsylvania. He flunked the exam because his right eye was bad. Then he got another appointment. He retested his eye and it was alright. He then made it into West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York]. He did not go overseas with the 106th [Annotator's Note: 106th Infantry Division]. He went to West Point in 1944. He got in two weeks late. Many of them had been to universities before they got to West Point. Johnson took French for two years. When World War Two started they accelerated some of the classes. Johnson was in the class of 1947. He knew the 106th had been caught in the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945]. The Army photographers would take movie clips. They would see frontline battles. They studied the books on military history. Johnson was a cadet at West Point. The war was finished in Germany and they discussed how they were going to go after Japan. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] and Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] were great names in the academy. There were senior people that came back from the war and talked to the cadets.

James Johnson remembers the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was being talked about. Mr. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] was president. FDR [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] had died. Truman had ordered the bombs to be dropped, then the war was over. It was something that was to be expected. They got two months’ leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] for graduation. Johnson went home to Wisconsin. At West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York], they had soldiering in the summertime. If they were engineers, they went to Virginia to go into engineering. This lasted another six months. Then they were assigned to their unit within the Army. Johnson’s assignment was Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. In Korea, they would be out in the field. He did not want to be on occupation duty. It was a three-year unaccompanied tour. When the Russians left North Korea, Truman said they would leave South Korea. Johnson’s unit then went to Hawaii. Johnson met his wife and got married. Truman sent them back into Korea. The Army became a shadow Army after World War Two. They had poor training and poor equipment. Truman sent police into Korea.

James Johnson remembers the combat was continuous. [Annotator’s Note: He is referring to the Korean War which was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953.]. It was every day. They did not have a continuous front. They had good officers and commanders. They did not have all the equipment and ammunition they needed. They were preparing for the landings that MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] wanted to do. They were put into Korea in August and got into combat right away. They were fighting North Koreans. The North Koreans would attack and be suicidal. It was rifle fire mostly. They had to use ingenious tactics to be successful. They used headlights from an old truck and put them in a foxhole. When they were getting attacked, they would hook the lights to a battery and illuminate the battlefield. They fought at nighttime. Johnson worked all day as an engineer building, and at night he fought. He never slept. He got wounded twice in his first two months there. They fought near the Yellow River and then the Chinese came. The Chinese were very effective. The Marines had one regiment in, and the Army had three or four divisions down on the perimeter. They fought alongside the Marines. Johnson was in the first group to be rotated back to the States [Annotator’s Note: the United States]. They were in an ambush early on in the war. They were surrounded and the fighting went on for about a week. They had to go through a pass and he got shot the first time. Three weeks later, he was in the front of the attack and he got hit by his own men with a machine gun from a tank. He got angry and went back and told the tank not to fire down the road again.

James Johnson came back to the United States and was supposed to go to an advanced course. They pulled him out and put him in officer candidate school to run a company. He was one of the first combat-experienced junior officers to come back from the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He was a second lieutenant, then became a first lieutenant, and got a battlefield promotion to captain. He was a captain for nine years. In the Army, promotions were slow. He loved the University of Wisconsin [Annotator's Note: in Madison, Wisconsin] and chemical engineering. He did well academically. When he got drafted, he was put into combat engineering. He went to West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York] as a tactical officer. He trained cadets. He led them for three years. Then he went to Stanford University [Annotator's Note: in Stanford, California] for his master’s degree. Then he was sent to Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] as the advisor for the chief of engineers of the Vietnamese Army. Then he went back to Vietnam as a colonel. He had a group down in the delta. There were about ten battalions for construction. Then he was promoted to brigadier general. He was the commanding general of the engineers in Vietnam. He applied for Christmas leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to go home, but did not get it. He was told he could bring his family to Vietnam or the Philippines. They lived in the Philippines. He was over there for about three years. He retired in 1980. He became the director of military engineering. He built the Israeli airfield. Then he retired. He served for 38 years.

James Johnson would tell men what to do and not how to do it when he gave orders [Annotator's Note: during the Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953, and the Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. They were attacking the enemy in trenches. Johnson was told to take command and continue the attack. He took his unit and went around the hill instead of just continuing on the front. The good lord kept him whole. He had times when he wondered if they would make it. He hopes he improved the management policies. He is happy with his time in the service. He went to West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy in West Point, New York]. He had a lot of luck.