Doris Miller
“I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”
Born on a Waco, Texas farm in 1919, Doris Miller grew up there before enlisting in the United States Navy in 1939. After training at Norfolk Miller would be assigned to the ammunition tender USS Pyro, where worked as a Mess Attendant until being transferred to the battleship USS West Virginia as a cook in early 1940. During his service aboard the West Virginia miller took up boxing, becoming the ship’s heavyweight champion in short order before transferring again to the USS Nevada for a training period before returning in August of 1941 to the West Virginia as a Mess Attendant Second Class.
The USS West Virginia after the Pearl Harbor Attack, sunken alongside the USS Tennessee
On the morning of December 7th, 1941 Miller was collecting laundry when he heard the call for general quarters at 0757, and he immediately moved to his battle station at an anti-aircraft battery amidships, but upon arrival discovered that the position had been destroyed already by the attacking Japanese.
He proceeded to assist in moving wounded sailors out of the line of enemy fire on the decks, until he was ordered by an officer to move to the bridge to help with moving the gravely injured skipper, Captain Melvyn Bennion. The captain, who had been hit by shrapnel and nearly disembowled, refused to be moved, instead remaining at his post and commanding his ship until his death.
After being ordered to leave the captain, Miller moved to the .50 caliber machine gun located aft of the bridge with two officers, who intended for him to help with the loading of the weapons, and gave him basic instructions on the operation of the gun. When the officers moved to load the other gun in the position, however, Miller took the .50 and began to engage the Japanese aircraft attacking the West Virginia despite his lack of formal training in the operation of the machine gun. He would eventually be credited with shooting down two enemy planes before the ammunition ran out.
With the ship taking hits from both bombs and torpedoes she was taking on water, and the crew began to counterflood the starboard compartments to prevent her from capsizing. The order came to abandon ship, and Miller assisted in evacuating the wounded from the sinking and blazing battleship.
Admiral Chester Nimitz awards the Navy Cross to Miller
With the West Virginia out of action, Miller reported for duty a week after the attack to the cruiser USS Indianapolis. As he did so, stories began to circulate about a black messman who had manned a gun despite a lack of training during the Japanese attack, although the Navy did not bother to identify him. It took the efforts of the popular black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier to track down Dorrie Miller and set about spreading the word of his actions.
The result was a push to award him with the Congressional Medal of Honor, but despite these efforts certain highly placed officials in the US government opposed the effort. A written commendation from the Secretary of the Navy was issued to Miller, but that did not satiate the calls for Miller to be awarded the nation’s highest honor. In the end he was given the Navy Cross, then the third highest decoration after the Navy Distinguished Service Medal and the Medal of Honor. Miller was decorated by Admiral Chester Nimitz on the deck of the carrier USS Enterprise on May 27th of 1942.
Dorrie Miller on a US Navy recruitment poster
Following his decoration, he returned to duty aboard the USS Indianapolis, although his advocates in the press remained unhappy, as the white heroes of Pearl Harbor had been brought back to the United States for war bond tours. In the Pittsburgh Courier, the same paper that had initially broke his identity to the public, the headline ran “He Fought, Keeps Mop”.
A campaign continued at home to return Miller to the US for a bond tour, eventually reaching as far as Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, and thus, in November of 1942 he was reassigned to undertake a tour. He traveled from California to his hometown of Waco, Texas, and subsequently made his way northward before ending up at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, where he gave a speech to the first graduating class at Camp Robert Smalls, the segregated sub-camp for blacks attacked to the aforementioned facility. He spoke of his pride in the Navy, and by this time he remained something of a celebrity, even appearing on a Navy recruiting poster.
The USS Guadalcanal, a Casablanca Class Escort Carrier essentially identical to the USS Liscome Bay
In May of 1943 Miller was reassigned to the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay, and reported to the Puget Sound Naval Yard to join his new ship. Subsequently training in Hawaii for some time, the carrier eventually entered active service by November as they sailed to join the fleet supporting the US landings on Makin Atoll.
The day after the capture of the island, November 24th, the Liscome Bay was moving as part of a task force to support the mop up operations there when they were sighted by the Japanese submarine I-175. The Japanese submarine fired a spread of torpedoes at the Liscome Bay, one of which impacted near the engine room. The resulting explosion detonated a magazine of aircraft munitions, causing a larger blast that engulfed the ship and left her to rapidly sink, taking 644 men to the bottom with her, including Dorrie Miller.
The USS Gerald Ford, first of the US Navy’s new class of supercarriers
Miller’s body was never recovered, but he left a lasting legacy in the US Navy. He had served at a time when the segregation of the US Armed Forces was beginning to decline, and indeed the same training facility he had spoken at in 1942, Camp Robert Smalls, produced the Navy’s first group of black officers in March of 1944. His service and fame had served as an inspiration to black Americans to enlist during the conflict despite the prejudice they experience at home.
Miller’s family were informed he was missing in action on the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1944, and received word he had been killed came a year and a day after the sinking of the USS Liscome Bay.
Miller was the namesake of the Knox Class frigate USS Miller, which was in service from 1973 to 1991, and a more notable tribute was to come later. In 2020 the US Navy announced that the fourth of their new Ford Class fleet carriers, CVN-81, would be named USS Doris Miller. The man who when he enlisted was considered second class, and not even permitted to fire a weapon would now lend his name to one of the most powerful warships ever constructed, a symbol of both the power of the US Navy and of one of its enduring heroes.
