Honolulu County HI Archives Obituaries.....Johnson, Samuel Ignatieff February 24, 1948
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J. Orr jessicanorr@gmail.com February 16, 2012, 8:00 pm

Unknown Newspaper, February 25, 1948
DEATH OVERTAKES ‘SAM’ JOHNSON COSSACK-BORN SOLDIER OF FORTUNE FORMER HAWAII 
OFFICER, DIES IN S.F.

  San Francisco, Feb. 25 (AP)- Samuel Ignatieff Johnson, soldier of fortune 
who at one time was a brigadier general of the Hawaiian national guard, died 
peacefully yesterday. He was 74.
  The Russian born adventurer rode with the Cossack cavalry. He was a 
mercenary in a half dozen Balkan armies. For six years he fought as a paid 
soldier in various South American revolutions.
  Yet he was best known here as Col. Johnson, liquor enforcement chief for 
this district during prohibition. He became a U. S. citizen in 1895.
  At 17, Johnson saved his Russian commander’s life under fire from the 
Turkish army. His criticism of the Russian regime led to his exile when he was 
20.
  In America, Johnson enlisted and fought in the Spanish-American war. After 
the war, he settled in Hawaii, joined the national guard and became a 
brigadier general and its commanding officer. In World War I, he resigned his 
commission and enlisted as a private. He rose to major.
  In 1920, while with Allied forces at Vladivostok, he saved the life of the 
Russian chief of staff.
  He lived in the Philippines for a time and managed a large plantation there.
  Then he bought a ranch in Texas. He finally retired in the 1920s. He had 
been ill a number of years. His widow, Florence, and a son by a former 
marriage, Ivan, survive.
  Invalid for years past. Friends in Honolulu of Sam Johnson said today that 
he had been an invalid for several years past.
  Crippled from the effects of injuries received in his Siberian duty he had 
to retire from active life nearly 10 years ago. He lived with Mrs. Johnson in 
an apartment on Lombard St., San Francisco, and in recent years had been 
confined to his bed or a chair. His once rugged physique was gone.
  In World War I he commanded the most picturesque and one of the strangest 
outfits in any army during that war-the Inter-Allied occupation and police 
force of Vladivostok and vicinity. He was provost marshal for the district, 
with military police detachments of 13 different nationalities under his 
direction.


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