"Dr. J. Bond Johnson Passed Away Quietly in His Sleep Saturday, March 25"

     Dr. J. Bond Johnson passed away quietly in his sleep Saturday, March 25, 2006, in Long Beach, Calif., from complications due to cancer.

Memorial services aill be held at the base chapel at Los Alamitos Naval Air Station in California. His cremated remains will be placed in a niche at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Please go to here for more information.

Born June 18, 1926, in Fort Worth, Dr. Johnson was the only son of the Rev. Floyd E. and Gladys Johnson, who ministered to Texas Methodists their entire lives. Upon graduation at age 15 from Taylor High School in 1942, he returned to Fort Worth to enroll at Texas Wesleyan as a journalism major. With a great many of the men away in World War II and having written and edited for his high school paper and the Taylor Daily Press, he soon gained employment as a reporter-photographer at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

He remained in its employ for more than five years, including the time before and after his service in the Army Air Corps, while he earned degrees from Texas Wesleyan and Texas Christian universities. Later he was to also earn higher academic degrees in education, theology and psychology from Southern Methodist, Southern California and Claremont universities.

J. Bond Johnson received the most attention in recent years for having photographed in 1947 for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the wreckage of the controversial "UFO Crash" in Roswell, N.M. He was sent by his editor to photograph the debris from the crash that had been transported to Gen. Ramey's office at Fort Worth Army Air Station. He shot a series of six photographs (both sides of three glass plates from a Speed-Graphic camera), of which five survive in the collection at the University of Texas at Arlington. These photos are the only known pictures of this famous and controversial debris. Although a minor incident in his life, this event would come back later to include him in UFO investigations.

In 1952, he was called back into the military and sent through the Marine Corps Officer Training School in Quantico, Va. and later assigned as public information officer at El Toro Marine Base in Orange County, Calif. It was here that he earned his wings as a Marine aviator. He became a life member of the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association.

At the end of the Korean War, he was released from active duty with the rank of captain and continued in the Marine Reserve. He was honorably discharged from the Marines in 1962 and immediately entered the U.S. Army Reserve. He retired as a full colonel after 33 years of service.

Col. Johnson was a consultant to the National Security Council at the White House and served on the Eisenhower Commission, which revised the Code of Conduct for prisoners of war, and was a Pentagon consultant to "Operation Homecoming," the Department of Defense rehabilitation program for returning prisoners of war after the Vietnam War. He was on the consulting faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

He was a post-doctorate fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health for three years of clinical psychiatry training in the post-graduate Department of Psychiatry, University of Southern California School of Medicine. He also received clinical training at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Fort Worth, TCU-VA Veterans Guidance Center in Fort Worth, Metropolitan Hospital in Norfolk, Calif., Tri-City Mental Health Authority in Pomona, Calif., and Memorial Hospital Medical Center of Long Beach.

Since 1960, Dr. Johnson had been a California board-certified and licensed clinical psychologist. He was in private practice as a clinical and consulting psychologist in Long Beach for 39 years with specialties in family therapy, sports and industrial psychology. In 1970, he founded the Long Beach Youth Home, a residential treatment facility and school for emotionally troubled youths, and in 1974, he established Cedar House in Long Beach, which has become a national model in the treatment of child and spousal abuse.

He pioneered in studying the etiology of post-traumatic stress disorder, having interviewed returned prisoners of war, escapees and evacuees during three wars. He served as an Army Air Corps pilot cadet in World War II, a Marine Corps captain during the Korean War and an Army psychological operations specialist during the Vietnam War.

Dr. Johnson was ordained a Methodist minister by the Central Texas Methodist Conference. He served churches in Everman, Cross Plains and Italy, Texas. Fifty years later, in 1996, he retired from active ministry as senior pastor of First United Methodist Church of San Pedro, Calif.

Survivors: Wife, Elizabeth; son, Jerry Johnson; daughters, Jan Johnson and Joyce Jackson, all of California; grandchildren, Jennifer Shull of New York and Aaron Jackson of Hawaii; and sister, Elaine J. Carroll of Fort Worth.

See Also: J. Bond Johnson Memorial

See Also: Interview: James Bond Johnson (Roswell Wreckage Photographer)
By Dennis Balthaser