KC woman proud of World War I hero’s honor, despite mistaken identity

Before her father died in 2004, Tara Johnson promised she would see his last priority through to the end.

For years, Herman Johnson had worked to see his own father — World War I hero Henry Johnson — receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration for valor.

That happened Tuesday, and Tara Johnson of Kansas City was among those invited to the White House to see President Barack Obama present the medal.

One problem: According to the U.S. Army, Henry Johnson — “the only grandfather I will ever know,” Tara Johnson said — was no relation to her or to Herman Johnson.

“This has shaken our family,” Tara Johnson said Wednesday from Washington. “We were blindsided by this; we had no clue.

“We were pretty sure of who we were.”

Late last month, she met with a brigadier general from Fort Knox, home of the Army Past Conflict Repatriations Branch, which had examined Henry Johnson’s life and combat records.

For recipients of the Medal of Honor, Army experts document blood relatives.

“The general said the genealogist could not connect the dots,” Tara Johnson said. The review determined that Henry Johnson had no next of kin.

The general showed Tara Johnson several documents, among them her father’s birth certificate and her grandmother’s marriage license. On neither, she said, did the name of the World War I hero appear.

For family reasons, Johnson declined to identify the name that did appear.

“My father had two brothers, and I am not the only grandchild,” she said. “My family is really struggling right now, and I just want them to be able to tell their own stories when they want to.”

Still, she added, the general told her that without the yearslong efforts of her father, it’s likely Henry Johnson would not have received the medal.

‘What happened here?’

The late Herman Johnson, who died in 2004 at 87, grew up in New York and graduated from Cornell University before moving to Kansas City in the late 1950s.

He served in the Missouri General Assembly from 1968 to 1972. He twice was head of the Kansas City chapter of the NAACP, and he operated the Herman Johnson Co., a real estate and insurance firm.

Tara Johnson said she has no explanation for how her father grew up believing the World War I hero was his father.

“I have a cousin who is 72, another cousin who is 71, and I am 56,” she said. “None of us have known anything else.”

Herman Johnson was born in 1916. Henry Johnson died in 1929.

Herman Johnson, his daughter said, was sent away to Elmira, N.Y., when he was about 6 to be reared by a great aunt and great uncle. He had limited contact with the man he believed to be his father.

Still, Tara Johnson said, her father had vivid memories of visiting Henry Johnson in various parks and at a veterans hospital in Illinois.

“He told stories about what his dad looked like and what he said,” she said.

“He talked about his dad’s big smile and his sense of humor. He was passionate about Henry Johnson, and I have no doubt that he went to his grave knowing that Henry Johnson was his dad.”

The Army said in a statement that it “believes this to be a case of historical inaccuracy, not fraudulent representation.”

One Albany, N.Y., historian has posited that perhaps Tara Johnson’s grandmother told her son that Henry Johnson was his father to provide him a role model.

“I’m pretty sad that anybody would speculate on something so difficult,” Tara Johnson said. “But the people who could explain this to us are gone now.

“When I die and go to heaven, the first two family members I see I am going to grab and say, ‘What happened here, guys?’”

Belated honors

Henry Johnson, born in North Carolina in 1892, moved to New York as a teenager and worked as a chauffeur, a coal yard laborer and a railroad station porter in Albany.

He enlisted in the Army in June 1917 and was assigned to the 15th New York (Colored) Infantry Regiment, an all-black National Guard unit that later would become the 369th Infantry Regiment, sometimes called the Harlem Hellfighters.

While serving on night sentry duty in northern France in May 1918, Henry Johnson and a fellow soldier suffered multiple wounds during hand-to-hand combat with as many as 20 German soldiers. Using a rifle, grenades and a knife, Johnson helped drive off the Germans and kept his comrade from being taken prisoner.

Newspapers soon told of “The Battle of Henry Johnson.”

But, as President Obama detailed Tuesday, Henry Johnson received no recognition from the U.S. Army.

When the Army discharged him as a sergeant in 1919, he returned home a hero, riding in an open car in a parade down New York’s Fifth Avenue. But he was unable to return to his prewar porter position because of the severity of his combat injuries.

“Henry was one of the first Americans to receive France’s highest award for valor,” Obama said during Tuesday’s ceremony.

“But his own nation didn’t award him anything — not even the Purple Heart, though he had been wounded 21 times. Nothing for his bravery, though he had saved a fellow soldier at great risk to himself. His injuries left him crippled. He couldn’t find work. His marriage fell apart.”

Efforts to honor Henry Johnson began in the 1970s. Officials in Albany renamed a boulevard in his honor and later unveiled a bust of the soldier at a park.

In 1996, Henry Johnson posthumously received a Purple Heart, but his champions continued their research of his wartime service, and many politicians joined the effort.

When historians found Henry Johnson’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery in 2002, Herman Johnson traveled from Kansas City to Washington and stood alongside then-New York Gov. George Pataki for a graveside ceremony.

In 2003, Henry Johnson posthumously received a Distinguished Service Cross.

“This was our country, and we were glad to fight for it,” Herman Johnson told guests filling the Liberty Memorial plaza for a ceremony honoring his father that year.

“All we asked is that we be remembered and respected for it.”

Heartbroken, but also overjoyed

Henry Johnson’s narrative had a profound influence on her family, Tara Johnson said.

Her father served during World War II with a segregated unit, the Tuskegee Airmen. Her son, DeMarqus Townsend, served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq and battled insurgents in Fallujah.

On Tuesday, she attended the White House ceremony with a cousin, also named Herman Johnson, a Marine veteran of Vietnam.

“We are very proud of this family, and this does not change how I feel about Henry Johnson,” said Tara Johnson, who on Tuesday placed a wreath on Henry Johnson’s grave in Arlington.

Still, she said, she thinks her father’s reaction to the developments would have been mixed.

The revelation that he was not related to Henry Johnson would have left her father “heartbroken,” she said.

But he would have been overjoyed by the White House ceremony, where a representative of the New York National Guard accepted Henry Johnson’s medal from the president.

“That was my reward, it really was.”

This story was originally published June 3, 2015 at 5:42 PM with the headline "KC woman proud of World War I hero’s honor, despite mistaken identity."