A Family Remembrance at the Battle of Honshū Island
Today marks the 79th anniversary of my grandfather earning the Navy Cross. He was 30 years old.
Seventy-nine years ago today my grandfather Dwight L. Johnson earned the Navy Cross — our nation’s second highest military award.
Here’s the commendation:
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Commander [then Lieutenant Commander] Dwight Lyman Johnson (NSN: 0-78645), United States Navy, for extraordinary heroism and distinguished service in the line of this profession as Commanding Officer of the Destroyer U.S.S. MILLER (DD-535), in action against enemy Japanese forces off the Southern Coast of Honshu, Japan, on 19 March 1945. When the aircraft carrier U.S.S. FRANKLIN (CV-13) was set ablaze by enemy action, Lieutenant Commander Johnson maneuvered his destroyer alongside the carrier and, despite intense smoke and grave danger from explosions, rescued the Commander of his task group and several key personnel trapped on the Flag Bridge, transporting them to another carrier. Returning to the stricken vessel, he repeatedly placed his ship alongside her to rescue trapped personnel and to fight fires. His gallant conduct and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.
You can watch a great documentary about the USS Franklin.
I think often about my grandfather, who I never met, and all that he did for our country, which was recounted in the Coronado press in 1961.
RAdm. Dwight L. Johnson, USN, ret,, 47, 825 G avenue, was retired from the Navy in 1958 after serving 25 years and surviving 12 major naval engagements during World War 11. A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the yoiihgest of 12 children, he entered the Naval Academy in .1933 and since 1937 served in battleships, cruisers and destroyers. He was an officer of the battleship Oklahoma when she was sunk in Pearl Harbor and in cruisers he went through the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and Komandorski Islands. As commanding officer of the destroyer Miller he fought in six more major engagements in the Western Pacific, receiving the Bronze and Silver Stars, the Navy Cross and Unit Commendation. He has been an instructor at the Naval Academy and did curriculum planning for the Naval War College for three years. In 1958 he attended the British Joint Service Staff College, after which he was strategic plans and operations officer for Navy to SACEUR at SHAPE in Paris. RAdm. Johnson returned to Coronado in 1958 and was. retired with a physical disability, rheumatoid arthritis.
He is the father of four: Two sons have graduated from CHS and a daughter is in junior high and a son is in second grade. In school work he was a board member of the Parent-Faculty Association of St. Michael’s School in Newport and director of fund raising for the Paris American Schools PTA. He is presently a member of the Coronado curriculum survey committee, studying the curriculum of the Coronado Unified School District.
That attack on the Franklin ultimately led to the 1949 film, Task Force, which starred Gary Cooper and discussed naval power and how visionaries are so often neglected.
What courageous thing have you done lately? I think often of my grandparents.