From a family archive, unexpectedly exhumed after fifty years, UNDESIRABLE tells the story of my father’s heroic efforts to secure an Honorable Discharge for my brother, Douglas Johnson. In August 1970 Doug returned from Vietnam at age twenty, a shattered man with an Undesirable Discharge. That actual document is here superimposed over a vintage photograph from the May 25 1970 issue of Time Magazine. Amid these anonymous GIs, Doug is third from the right, head covering, big grin, flashing the peace sign. I’m grateful to UNMP for securing use of this photo and to Felicia Cedillos for her stunning design.

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UNDESIRABLE: The Vietnam War and a Father’s Battle for Justice

By

Laura Kalpakian

January 1969, nineteen-year-old Doug Johnson—piano prodigy, popular teen, Eagle Scout—drops a class at the community college making him ripe for the draft. His father, Bill Johnson is furious. In a spasm of adolescent spite, Doug enlists in the 4^th Infantry.

June 1969, Private Johnson arrives in Vietnam—immediately finding trouble. Within days, he’s gone AWOL. Within weeks he is continually mainlining speed and heroin, sometimes with a chaser of LSD before going out on point into the jungle. He is repeatedly beset with malaria, hepatitis, jungle rot and dysentery. In November 1969, court-martialed for many AWOLs, and a drug charge, he is found guilty, loses rank and pay, but jail time is suspended. In December he goes AWOL again. Arrested, this time he is sent under armed guard to the infamous Long Binh Jail, to what’s known as “the box.”

By mid-January, dying from hepatitis, Doug is airlifted to a military hospital in Japan— thanks to his father’s ceaseless efforts on his behalf. Bill Johnson fails in his further campaign to get Doug transferred out of Vietnam. After a month in the hospital, Doug is returned to Nam. He ceases to write to his parents.

In May 1970 Bill and Peggy Johnson see his photo in a Time Magazine article with a group of nameless GIs about to invade Cambodia in what Richard Nixon calls “Operation Buy Time.” But Doug doesn’t fight in Cambodia. He goes AWOL. Arrested, he is once again sent to Long Binh Jail. After two weeks, he returns to his unit, pending a second court-martial as further drug, AWOL and other charges accrue.

That summer, Bill Johnson sends letters, telegrams, makes phone calls, barrages senators, congressmen, chaplains, officers up and down the Army chain of command, demanding information about his son. His instructions become increasingly strident, angry, alienating even his allies.

 Finally to avoid a second court martial—and to be out of the Army—Doug accepts an Undesirable Discharge. Defeated, drugged, malnourished, and clutching the sandal of a dead Viet Cong, Doug Johnson staggers off a plane at McChord AFB in late August 1970 where his father awaits him.

The Undesirable Discharge denies Doug any recognition of his fourteen months of wartime service, including veterans’ benefits. The burdens of his return—physical, emotional, financial, spiritual, logistical—fall entirely upon the Johnson family. Though Doug is crazed and unstable, a physical and psychological wreck, he tells his father of circumstances that convince Bill the Undesirable was undeserved. Unjustified.

Bill Johnson once again, picks up the pen, initiates a fierce, years-long crusade to secure an Honorable Discharge for his son. Bill hammers at the Army, but despite compelling evidence, they repeatedly deny. Finally, after engaging the attention of a former Assistant Attorney General to shepherd Doug’s case through the Pentagon, in December 1972, the Army grants a General Discharge Under Honorable Circumstances.

This allows Doug veteran’s benefits, and the Johnsons are grateful, but not satisfied. In April 1973 Bill petitions again for an unambiguous Honorable. Denied. Bill gives up, heaps all the voluminous records he and his wife have kept into a home safe. Door shut. Lock spun.

There everything stayed, untouched, unmentioned for fifty years.

In 2024 Doug’s sister, author Laura Kalpakian, exhumed these papers, brought them upstairs, out of the safe, out of the darkness, assessed, assembled and questioned the meanings implicit in them. In Undesirable: The Vietnam War and a Father’s Battle for Justice the truth emerges: the Army covered up an injustice inflicted on a vulnerable enlisted man.

Resonant, unforgettable voices arise from this archive: the fearless father, the teenage soldier’s wail from a psychic abyss, the sympathetic military lawyer, the loyal Congressman, the rock-ribbed Republican who, amid the swirling Watergate scandal, offers help to a stranger. Here, too, is a vast gallery of an uncaring military establishment that refuses to right a wrong. Doug Johnson remained the prisoner of PTSD, mental illness, and addiction for thirty years.

Undesirable: The Vietnam War and a Father’s Battle for Justice chronicles a parent’s heroic efforts on behalf of a beloved, doomed son and a family who bore the burdens of war for decades