It was just before 8 a.m. aboard the USS West Virginia, anchored in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the first torpedo hit.
Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller was deep into the day’s laundry when the blast sent one of his lieutenants racing to sound the alarm.
Miller, the 19-year-old son of Texas sharecroppers, was just two years into his naval service. He enlisted hoping to see the world and perhaps come home with the prospects of a good job. The Navy was segregated, and mess was the only duty in which black men like Miller were allowed to serve. He had no gunnery training; in the heat of battle, he would be expected to feed ammunition to the white man operating one of the ship’s .50-caliber Browning antiaircraft machine guns.
The torpedo blast destroyed Miller’s ammo that day, and he was forced to the deck, where he carried injured sailors to safety. But even without gun training, Miller knew he could do more to save his crew. He jumped behind one of the unmanned Brownings, swung it skyward and fired until his belt was empty and crew members were ordered to abandon ship.
Asked later about his heroics, Miller was collected.
“It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns,” Miller said at the time, according a biography of Miller by the Naval History and Heritage Command. “I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”
Of the West Virginia’s 1,541 crew members, 106 (including the captain) died and 52 were injured.
After Dec. 7, Miller was hailed in news reports only as an “unnamed Negro messman hero.”
Miller wouldn’t remain anonymous forever. Months later, he was recognized for his heroics by the Pittsburgh Courier, the influential African American weekly newspaper. He was the first black recipient of the Navy Cross medal — the highest decoration after the Medal of Honor.
And 78 years later, the Navy will name a $12.5 billion aircraft carrier in his honor, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser first reported, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/19/doris-miller-pearl-harbor/
This is a good thing. Doris Miller was a
bona fide hero, regardless of the color of his skin.
Recognizing the invidious discrimination that limited his options and affected his life is legitimate. At the same time, selecting him for this honor because he was a no-shit, real-life hero is appropriate.
Here's to the USS
Doris Miller. Fair winds and following seas!
