U. Alexis (Ural Alexis) Johnson oral history interview

1978-09-26/1978-10-23

Johnson, U. Alexis (Ural Alexis), 1908-1997; Mayo, Marlene J.

Oral history interview with Ural Alexis Johnson conducted by Marlene Mayo on September 26 and October 23, 1978. Ural Alexis Johnson (1908 - 1997) was born in Kansas and lived there and in California while growing up. He graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C. Johnson studied Japanese in the United States to prepare for his position as a language officer in Japan. After Pearl Harbor, he was stuck in Japan and was not able to leave until toward the end of the war. When he was able to leave, he worked with the State Department in Brazil to work on training the military for the soon to come occupation of Japan. After the Occupation, Johnson was part of the efforts to end the Korean War. Later in his career, he became the Ambassador for the United States to countries including Czechoslovakia, Thailand, South Vietnam, and Japan. He was also an important part of the negotiations with the Soviet Union in Geneva. Johnson passed away in 1997 at the age of 88 in Raleigh, North Carolina.

University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)

Oral histories

Japan--History--Allied occupation, 1945-1952

Japan; District of Columbia

Postwar Japan

Special Collections and University Archives

English

Collection may be protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. To obtain permission to publish or reproduce, please contact the University of Maryland Libraries at http://www.lib.umd.edu/special/contact/home.

Recording: 02:42:00 (audiocassette: mp3); Transcript 1: 46 pages (PDF); Transcript 2: 27 pages (PDF)

This oral history interview is part of the Marlene J. Mayo oral histories. A guide to the full collection of Marlene J. Mayo oral histories is available in our archival collections: http://hdl.handle.net/1903.1/42478.
Accession 2009-209-GWP
An interview transcript is available.

Filename: prange-087556