page_title: Vernon O. Johnson
section_title: Two-year journey opens Trans-Siberian Railway to tourists
hierarchical_section_title: Vernon O. Johnson / Two-year journey opens Trans-Siberian Railway to tourists
caption_attribution_description: English: Vernon O. Johnson speaking with Khrushchev at American Embassy Moscow, 4 July1961. Ambassador Llewelleyn Thompson is between them; Russian interpreter with back to camera. (Johnson's daughter, Christie's blond hair visible on upper right.)
context_page_description: Vernon Oliver Johnson. American World War II B17 pilot, Congressional candidate, traveler and advocate for world peace. After losing his crew in a B17-bomber crash and spending 18 months in V.A. hospitals, Johnson dedicated himself to solving global political tensions via face-to-face dialogue. During the height of the Cold War, he traveled the world for 20 months with his wife, Anne Beckwith Johnson and their eight children, promoting peace and world diplomacy through personal interaction.
context_section_description: By the mid 1950s, anti-Communist influence of Senator Joe McCarthy, aided by the House Un-American Activities Committee led to the establishment of the Doolittle Report.  In September 1959, when Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev was denied permission to visit Disneyland during his U.S. tour he was angry. Headlines read "K Blows Top".  On the train ride from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Khrushchev was not interested in visiting with other dignitaries. Public relations had a planned stop for him to shake hands with the mayor in Santa Barbara. Johnson, his wife, and eight children were at the train station to greet the world leader. Khrushchev looked out the train window, had eye contact with Johnson then stood, walked to the front of the train, disembarked and shook hands with the mayor, then walked 40–50 yards back to shake Johnson's hand and said (via interpreter), "You have a nice face".  Johnson replied that he would take his family to Russia; Khrushchev said Russia would welcome them. The Times of London headline reported "All Change In Santa Barbara".
   On March 3, 1960, Vernon, Anne, and his eight children began a 20-month world journey as an education in foreign affairs that Vernon asserted could not be learned in public schools. Time-Life offered cameras, film and money to cover the trip, all refused by Johnson who sought independence abroad.
  They left New York  on the Italian liner, the MS Vulcania to Venice. The bus went to Amsterdam, and as Johnson went north to retrieve it, the family lived in a brothel in Verona awaiting his return.  From Verona they visited the site of his B17 crash before heading to Naples where their luggage from the Vulcania had been dropped.
  In Rome, the "Daily American" wrote "Vernon Johnson…is threatening to set the well-planned travel tour back 50 years" and quoted Johnson with saying that with the US/USSR summit in Paris derailed by 1960 U-2 incident, "I was tempted to send [Khrushchev] a cable telling him to quit lousing up our trip". That attracted the attention of Anita Ekberg of La Dolce Vita-fame, and prompted her to escort the family for a week in Rome, She, her Italian actor boyfriend Franco Silva, her producer, secretary, and others painted 4-foot long permanent autographs on the side of the bus, creating a traveling autograph album for the next 17 months.
  From Rome they went to France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Siberia, and Japan detailed in the book Home is Where the Bus Is, written by his wife, Anne Beckwith Johnson.
  
  From April 1960 until April 1961 Johnson appealed to every Russian embassy he visited for a two-month visa into Russia plus permission to cross Siberia. There was no road network across Siberia and the Trans-Siberian Railway had been closed to tourists since 1917. Rejected on both counts, he was offered a standard two-week visa to visit Leningrad (Now St. Petersburg) and Moscow.  In May 1960, shortly before a US-USSR summit planned in Paris, the American U2 spy plane was shot down over Russia, adding tension to relations. In late April 1961, after multiple letters and visits to the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm, Russian authorities relented on visa length and issued visas to camp for two months.  Once in Moscow, frequent visits to the authorities rejected any possibility of riding the Railway.  
   On July 4, 1961, the day of the K19 Nuclear Submarine Accident, Johnson spoke again with Khrushchev at an event hosted by American Ambassador LLewellyn Thompson at the Ambassador's home in Moscow.  Four days later, the Soviet Union charged Francis Gary Powers, whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the USSR in May, with espionage. That week Johnson namedropped Khrushchev to authorities and successfully was issued a flat-car for the bus and tickets for 10 on the Railway. The only section they were not permitted to ride was the segment between Irkutsk and Khabarovsk for an undisclosed reason. A cargo plane carried them between those cities.  From there they re-joined the train to Nahodka (Vladivostok was closed to travel until 1982.
caption: Vernon O. Johnson speaking with Khrushchev at American Embassy Moscow, 4 July 1961. Ambassador Llewelleyn Thompson is between them; Russian interpreter with back to camera. (Johnson's daughter, Christie's blond hair visible on upper right.)
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2014:12:17 10:38:11", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7888", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "752", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "701"}