Heroes of Pearl Harbor: Doris Miller

B y : D a n i e l A . M a r t i n e z , C h i e f H i s t o r i a n , National Park Service

He was a young man who grew up on the dusty plains of Waco, Texas. It has been noted in Navy Times, that Doris Miller as a child, worked on his father’s farm. He was a gifted football athlete who dreamed of finishing high school but his family’s poverty forced him to drop out of school and seek some kind of work in town. In an interview his mother commented on their plight, “We were a little hungry in those days”. The “Great Depression” had descended on the Millers and thousands of Americans in those fateful years.

The challenges for a black man to get a job in segregated Waco in 1939 was daunting and never realized. So, he decided on another option, to sign up for the United States Navy. But even that for the young Miller had its challenges as well. The 19-year-old enlisted in the Navy as a Mess Attendant 3rd Class, the only rating then open to African American recruits. Doris Miller was an impressive young man. His Navy Service Records indicates that he was 6 feet tall and carried 178lbs.

After graduating from the Naval Training Station Norfolk, he was briefly assigned to the ammunition ship Pyro. On Jan. 2, 1940, he was transferred to the battleship West Virginia. It was during that time that Miller took up boxing and battled his way to be the ships heavyweight boxing champion.

That July he reported temporarily to the battleship Nevada for Secondary Battery Gunnery School and then returned to the USS West Virginia. On the morning of 7 December1941 he was going about his duties when explosions began ripping throughout Pearl Harbor. General Quarters was sounded and the crew ran to their Battle Stations. Rocked by torpedo hits the battleship began to list. During that two hours of the attack Doris Miller distinguished himself. Two white officers observed his heroism and reported what they had witnessed. The Navy would later award him the Navy Cross. It was pinned on by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. He would be the first African-American to receive that honor.

His Navy Cross citation reads:

For distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack

on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, by Japanese forces on December 7, 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller, despite enemy strafing and bombing and in the face of a serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety, and later manned and operated a machine gun directed at enemy Japanese attacking aircraft until ordered to leave the bridge.

After the attack he was temporarily assigned to the cruiser USS Indianapolis till May of 1943 and re-assigned the USS Liscome Bay on August 7, 1943. On November 25, 1944 The Liscome Bay was sunk by Japanese forces. Chief Cook 3 rd Class Miller was killed in action.

Seventy six years later, onMartin Luther King Jr. Day 2020, an announcement was made by Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, designating an aircraft carrier that will bear his name. Of the 23 men for whom aircraft carriers have been named, Doris Miller the hero of Pearl Harbor, will be the first African American to have that honor.