During an emotional Monday January 20, 2020 ceremony in Pearl Harbor, Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly honored the legacy of World War II hero Doris Miller by bestowing his name on a future aircraft carrier.
It marks the first time a flattop has paid homage to an African American, a Navy Cross recipient and an enlisted service member. And it was decreed on a day set aside to remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his lifelong crusade to end racial discrimination across the United States.
“Doris Miller was the son of a sharecropper and a descendant of slaves,” Modly said at the ceremony at Pearl Harbor. “He was not given the same opportunities that men of a different color were given to serve this country. But on Dec. 7, 1941, he would not be defined by the prejudice of other people.”
With the USS Arizona Memorial his backdrop, Modly sketched how Miller rose to battle on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, a mess attendant in a racially segregated rating that made African American men servants to white officers.
Instead of collecting the morning’s laundry, Miller carried wounded shipmates from the blazing battleship West Virginia after it was hit by enemy fire. He fought the flames as they erupted on the vessel and then manned a .50 caliber machine gun — a weapon he never operated previously — to swat away Japanese planes during the ongoing surprise attack that launched the United States into World War II.
His ammo spent and ordered to abandon ship; he was one of the last three sailors to escape the West Virginia.
When the Navy, which Miller had joined in 1939, awarded medals to those who had fought bravely, it didn’t even mention the name Doris Miller.
Four months later, the Pittsburgh Courier, perhaps the leading African American newspaper of the day, finally published the sailor’s name and the Navy grudgingly gave him a letter of commendation.
As recorded on Miller’s service card in the Navy Archives, President Roosevelt stepped in and ordered him awarded the Navy Cross. “That was not without controversy,” Modly said. “There were some people who did not want him to receive the Navy Cross, because of his race.”
Miller was assigned to the aircraft carrier Liscome Bay, which less than a year after Pearl Harbor, was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. Dorie Miller was never seen again.
“He died as he lived, an American sailor defending his nation, shoulder to shoulder with his shipmates, until the end,” said Modly. “Dorie Miller stood for everything that is good about our nation. His story deserves to be remembered and repeated wherever our people continue to stand the watch today.
“He’s not just the story of one sailor. It is the story of our Navy, of our nation and our ongoing struggle to form — in the words of our Constitution — a more perfect union.”
