He died on July 2, 1929, in New Lenox, Illinois. The NPS gives his death as July 1929 without a specific day; the History.com account gives July 2. He was 32 years old, by the 1897 birth year that some sources give; 36 or 37, if the 1892 birth year of the NPS is correct. He died alone and without money.
His family, for decades afterward, believed he had been buried in a pauper’s grave — the specific form of an indigent burial in which the state disposes of a body without ceremony and without a marked grave. This belief was part of the narrative of his post-war neglect: the man who had fought off a German raiding party in France had died and been buried without anyone knowing where.
The belief was wrong, but it was wrong in a way that took decades to correct.
## Arlington: The Discovery
In 2001 — seventy-two years after Johnson’s death — New York military historians confirmed that he had been buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in 1929.
The confirmation came from a records search that located his burial record. He had not been buried in a pauper’s grave. The Army had given him a military funeral with full honors. He was interred in Section 25 of Arlington Cemetery, among the graves of veterans from multiple wars.
His son, Herman Johnson, had been advocating for his father’s recognition for years before this discovery. The confirmation that Henry Johnson was at Arlington was a specific finding within the broader campaign for posthumous recognition, and it changed the narrative in a specific way: the country had not literally forgotten Henry Johnson in death. It had given him a military funeral and buried him in its most honored military cemetery. What it had failed to do was acknowledge, while he was alive, the specific valor and the specific injuries that made him worthy of that burial.