Philip's father was able to intervene and defuse a potentially violent clash known as the Padre Canyon Incident, which revealed underlying tensions between Navajos and Anglos involving livestock rustling.
[2] For resolving that incident in a peaceful manner, local Navajo leaders allowed Reverend Johnston to build a mission 12 miles north of Leupp, Arizona.
After that incident, Philip's father worked to expand the boundaries of the western part of the Navajo reservation in order to resolve livestock rustling disputes on which developing tensions were generally centered.
Between March and September 1918 he trained in Camp Fremont at Menlo Park, California, before being shipped to France as part of the AEF to participate in World War I.
Johnston attended the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, where he earned his graduate civil engineering degree in 1925.
After the attack he had read of the U.S. Army using Comanches in their Louisiana field maneuvers to transmit military communications and began to think that the Navajo language could also be applied in this manner.
General Vogel was so impressed with the Camp Elliot demonstration that he asked the Commandant of the Marine Corps to recruit 200 Navajos.
By October 26, 1942, Staff Sergeant Philip Johnston USMCR and Corporal John A. Benally USMC, one of the three stateside code talkers, were sent out to recruit more Navajos to join the program.
From late October through November 1942, they recruited Navajos throughout the western portion of the reservation, until they were recalled back to Camp Elliot.
Philip Johnston died on September 11, 1978, just 3 days shy of his 86th birthday, at the VA Hospital in San Diego, California.