Heroism and Injustice: The Man with No Name

Doris Miller

The first American hero of World War II — the so-called “good war” — was a man named Doris Miller. He performed his exemplary act on the morning December 7, 1941. War had not yet been declared, but violence was erupting out of the blue as Japanese bombers came screaming across the sky to slaughter more than 2,300 U.S. servicemen and 68 civilians at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Doris, who was known as Dorie, was twenty-two at the time. He had been a star fullback on his high school football team in Waco, Texas. But his family were sharecroppers and with the Depression on he had to drop out of school to take odd jobs. In 1939, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

Because he was Black, he was assigned the position of Mess Attendant, Second Class. It was the only type of work open to enlistees of his race. Cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry were among his duties. He received no combat training.

USS West Virginia

Miller went to sea on the battleship USS West Virginia. He won the heavyweight boxing championship of the vessel. On the morning of the day that would live in infamy, he was collecting dirty laundry. At 7:48 a.m., all hell broke loose.

The West Virginia was strafed and bombed by the attacking planes. The ship’s captain, Mervyn Bennion, was severely wounded. Miller was called on to help carry him off the bridge. Someone ordered him to fetch ammunition for one of two fifty-caliber machine guns on deck. When no one appeared to operate the gun, he manned it himself.

“It wasn't hard,” Miller said later. “I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. 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.”

When he ran out of ammo, Miller risked his life to help fellow sailors to safety. The crippled West Virginia quickly sank to the bottom — more than a hundred of its crewmen were killed. Miller had to swim three hundred yards to reach shore.

The USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor

In the first reports of the incident and for three months afterward, Miller was referred to only as “a Negro mess attendant.” Why did this man not have a name? He was only identified in March 1942 by the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper. After pressure from other African-American papers and groups like the NAACP, Navy Secretary Frank Knox gave Miller a citation. Many, including two members of Congress, thought he deserved the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Secretary Knox had told civil rights leaders that it was impossible to “enlist Negroes above the rank of messman” because in the confines of a ship, they could not be properly segregated. Making all Black sailors servants set them apart and kept them in their proper station.

As the very first hero of the war, Dorie Miller, if he had been white, would have been lionized, acclaimed, and promoted. He might have been considered for an appointment to the Naval Academy. The insult to Miller and to all Black servicemen who were risking their lives in the war effort infuriated Black Americans. President Roosevelt worried about wartime morale. In May 1942, after more agitation, Admiral Chester Nimitz pinned the Navy Cross, the service’s second highest commendation, to Miller’s chest.

Admiral Nimitz and Dorie Miller

Dorie Miller was later sent back to the States to promote war bonds. He got to visit his family in Waco for Christmas 1942. And he did get a promotion — to Cook, Third Class. His new ship was the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay. During the Gilbert Islands campaign in November 1943, the ship was torpedoed and went to the bottom. Dorie Miller, along with 643 other sailors, died. His body was never recovered.

Black Americans did not forget. They continued to campaign for Miller to receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. To no avail, even though many white servicemen with comparable achievements had been so honored.

In 1973, a destroyer was named for Miller. The ship was decommissioned twenty years later and scrapped. Finally, in 2020, the Navy, which had long since erased segregation in its ranks, announced that it would name another ship, a massive nuclear aircraft carrier, for Doris Miller. Most vessels of this class had been named for presidents, including Gerald R. Ford and John F. Kennedy. This will be the first such ship to honor an enlisted man. Work on the vessel is scheduled to begin in three years.

It’s a gesture. More than eighty years late, but an act of recognition by citizens of our generation that the stance of men up and down the chain of command during another era was a discredit to our nation. The slogan “never forget” has become a commonplace. But it is indeed our duty to remember — to remember what Dorie Miller did for his country, and to remember, too, what his country did, and did not do, for him.

Thanks to James Steinberg for drawing my attention to this story.

I’ll be on History Happy Hour YouTube channel this Sunday, March 3, at 4 pm ET talking about a famous traitor. More info HERE.