Paul Johnson’s path to Pearl Harbor included an expedition along the Great Wall of China.
Forty-five years after that horseback trek, Johnson got to revisit a stop along his Great Wall route. He went by way of Sesame Street.
At 95, the Vancouver veteran has witnessed some unforgettable events of the past century. The Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, was a historical landmark for a generation.
Johnson can still remember the moment 72 years ago when he was looking down at a Japanese warplane while drinking coffee. Johnson and a friend were on their ship’s fantail when they saw a torpedo bomber fly past, just above the water.
“We were 40 feet up, and he was lower than we were,” Johnson recalled.
It was not his first look at the Japanese military. Johnson was already a seasoned sailor when the USS Castor, a military transport, steamed into Pearl Harbor on the night of Dec. 6, 1941.
Johnson enlisted in 1938 and was part of the U.S. Navy’s Asiatic Fleet, which is how he spent part of his hitch sailing in the saddle. After his ship docked at Chinwangtao, the port at the east end of the Great Wall of China, several sailors were assigned shore duty.
“Bunch of spies was what it was,” the Vancouver veteran said.
A bus took the sailors out to a spot where they picked up their horses. Johnson was issued a small camera and a supply of black-and-white film, as well as a windup Keystone movie camera. Each sailor was assigned a section of the wall to reconnoiter.
He’d been on horses as a farm kid, Johnson said, but that just meant jumping on a bareback for a few minutes while riding out to get the cows.
Sort of hush-hush
His Great Wall trek took him about three weeks.
“I was sore,” he noted.
He’d stop every few miles, and Chinese who were part of what he called “sort of a hush-hush deal” would have food for Johnson and hay and grain for his horse.
He also saw a lot of Japanese soldiers.
“We were not at war, but we were close to it,” he said.
Navy officials had ordered the sailors not to photograph any Japanese troops, Johnson explained. If they happened to seize the sailors’ cameras and develop the film, the Japanese would only see travel snapshots.
One evening, Johnson rode up to a group of 10 Japanese soldiers camping along the wall; they pantomimed an invitation to join them for dinner. He waved off their invitation, just so they wouldn’t get too close to him and his gear.
His portion of the expedition was in a mountainous section, and the wall was built on a slope so its defenders would be 20 or 30 feet higher than an invading force. Some of the old Chinese weaponry was still scattered around, Johnson said: 30-foot-long pikes and shields as tall as his head.
After that assignment, Johnson eventually wound up on the USS Castor, which was transporting 10,000 tons of ammunition when it sailed into Pearl Harbor.
Wounded in attack
After the attack, Johnson took part in rescue and recovery efforts, pulling wounded and dead sailors from the oil-covered water.
Johnson earned a Purple Heart that day after he was wounded in his left hand by a flying metal fragment.
Other keepsakes from his Navy career include some of the photos he took in 1938. And 45 years later, Johnson got a flashback of his Great Wall trip when he went out to pick up his Sunday newspaper. Back then, The Columbian included a TV booklet.
When he saw the cover, Johnson said, he was stunned. It featured a “Sesame Street”special filmed in China. Big Bird was standing on the Great Wall, at the same spot Johnson had photographed in 1938. Before the war, it was a pretty shabby site. In the 1983 cover photo, it had been turned into a tourist attraction.
“I woke up my wife and said, ‘Look at this!’
“She told me to go back to bed.”
