When President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war against Japan on 8 December 1941, a humble sailor from Texas had already become America’s first black hero of the 1939–45 global conflict.
Mess Attendant Doris Miller, known as “Dorie” to his shipmates, displayed “extraordinary courage” during the 7 December 1941 Japanese carrier-plane raid on Pearl Harbor, which earned him the Navy Cross, a commendation by Navy Secretary Frank Knox, and praise from Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Poems and songs were written about the unassuming athlete, a Navy ship was named for him, and he was memorialized on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. Before and after he gave his life in action, the black community embraced him as an enduring inspiration during World War II.
Dorie Miller was born on 12 October 1919 to sharecroppers Conery and Henrietta Miller of Waco, Texas. He had three brothers, one of whom would serve in the Army during World War II. Dorie attended Waco’s Moore High School, where he stood out as a battering-ram fullback on the football team. Though a force to be reckoned with on the gridiron, he was nevertheless a soft-spoken and courteous young man. When not in school, he worked on his father’s farm.
At the age of 19, he decided that he wanted to travel and also earn money to help support his family, so he went to Dallas and enlisted in the Navy on 16 September 1939—two weeks after the outbreak of war. After completing basic training at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, he was assigned to the USS Pyro (AE-24), an ammunition ship, as a mess attendant, third class.
On 2 January 1940, Miller was transferred to the Colorado-class battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48). Commissioned on 1 December 1923, the 32,000-ton vessel mounted eight 16-inch guns and was regarded as one of the premier ships in the fleet. Miller soon found his athletic prowess in demand on board “the Wee Vee,” which had long emphasized sports activities to build crew morale, winning the “Iron Man” trophy more than any other ship. The young Texan became the battlewagon’s heavyweight-boxing champion.
After being assigned briefly in July 1940 to temporary duty on board the battleship USS Nevada (BB-36) and at the Secondary Battery Gunnery School, Miller returned to the West Virginia on 3 August 1940.
Sudden Morning Attack
Early on the balmy morning of Sunday, 7 December 1941, the battleships, cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers, tenders, and submarines of the U.S. Pacific Fleet lay at anchor, peaceful and unsuspecting, around Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. On Battleship Row, the West Virginia was anchored next to the USS Tennessee (BB-43) and astern the Oklahoma (BB-37) and the Maryland (BB-46). Sailors stirred from their bunks, headed to the messes for breakfast, and readied themselves for morning colors and church services.
On board the West Virginia, mess attendant Miller was belowdecks, collecting laundry and starting another routine day of menial tasks, which was the prescribed function of black sailors in the segregated U.S. Navy at that time. But at 0755, his chores were abruptly interrupted by the sounds of explosions, guns firing, and seamen shouting, “The Japs are attacking us!”
Without warning, the first of two waves of 360 Japanese carrier-borne bombers and fighters had burst through overcast skies and swept in over the island of Oahu to attack ships, airfields, and other military installations. America was suddenly thrust into the war—two years and three months after its outbreak.
Led by B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers, almost 200 planes in the first attack wave flew in low and fast over Pearl Harbor, loosing projectiles on Battleship Row. Within minutes, Pearl Harbor was an inferno of explosions, raging fires, and high columns of billowing black smoke. Among the battleships hit was the Arizona (BB-39), which blew up and sank, losing more than 1,100 officers and sailors.
Japanese planes, meanwhile, bombed and strafed the Ford Island and Kaneohe naval air stations, the Marine Corps air base at Ewa, and the Army Air Forces’ Hickam, Wheeler, and Bellows fields, where bombers and fighters were parked wing-to-wing and almost wiped out.
Miller Springs into Action
On board the West Virginia, Miller and other sailors scrambled topside to assist on deck when they felt the ship convulse and heard the din overhead. The Wee Vee was burning and severely damaged after being struck by two 1,000-pound bombs and six or seven torpedoes. She listed rapidly, but this was corrected by prompt counterflooding, allowing the battlewagon to settle almost upright on the harbor bottom. Her blackened, battered superstructure remained above water.
On deck, the force of another explosion knocked Miller down, but he recovered quickly and helped fire and rescue parties that the ship’s well-trained crew had organized. Because of his strength, Miller was able to carry several wounded men to shelter. All hands fought the fires. “Their spirit was marvelous,” the vessel’s surviving executive officer, Commander Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, recounted in the West Virginia’s action report of the attack.
On the West Virginia’s exposed conning bridge, Captain Mervyn S. Bennion directed defenses, then suddenly doubled up. Shrapnel, probably from an armor-piercing bomb that had just hit the nearby Tennessee, had torn into his abdomen. Lieutenant Commander T. T. Beattie, the ship’s navigator, loosened Bennion’s collar and summoned a pharmacist’s mate. Under continued strafing and as fires swept toward the bridge, Miller and Lieutenant D. C. Johnson, the communications officer, dragged the almost disemboweled Bennion to cover and tried to move him from the bridge.
But the stoic captain, likely knowing that he was dying, maintained command and ordered that he be left alone. His life flickered out a few minutes later. Along with Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, killed on board his flagship, the Arizona, Captain Bennion was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. Bennion was one of more than 100 men killed out of the Wee Vee’s complement of about 1,500. Kidd was the first American flag officer to die in World War II.
After the attempt to aid his dying skipper, Miller had joined Lieutenant Frederic H. White on the ship’s forward guns. Without hesitation, Miller positioned himself behind a big .50-caliber antiaircraft machine gun. Although he had received no gunnery training, the mess attendant quickly figured out how the weapon worked and began firing at strafing enemy planes. “I just grabbed hold of the gun and fired,” he reported later. “It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger, and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. . . . Those Jap planes were diving pretty close to us.”
As he explained during a visit to San Francisco in December 1942:
I forgot all about the fact that I and other Negroes can be only messmen in the Navy, and are not taught how to man an antiaircraft gun. Several of the men had lost their lives—including some of the high officers—when the order came for volunteers from below to come on the upper deck and help fight the Japanese. Without knowing how I did it, it must have been God’s strength and mother’s blessing, I ran up . . . and I started to fire the big guns.
Estimates of the number of planes he may have shot down range from one to five. He blasted away at the enemy raiders for about 15 minutes before running out of ammunition and being ordered to abandon the crippled ship. After helping rescue some shipmates, Miller dived into the harbor and swam to safety ashore. He had to swim part of the way underwater, beneath burning oil leaking from the Arizona and other nearby ships.
The Press Lauds Miller
In the wake of the Sunday-morning disaster in Hawaii, the press and stunned citizens needed heroes to shore up morale. The Navy obliged, and newspapers carried stories about such men as Admiral Kidd, Captain Bennion, and Chief Watertender Peter Tomich, who sacrificed himself in the boiler room of the sinking Utah so that his men could escape. The acts of bravery were all attributed to white servicemen, except for one newspaper item about an unnamed “Negro mess attendant.” The “Jim Crow” Navy was not ready for a black poster boy.
Dorie Miller’s exploits went unnoticed for more than three months, until his identity was revealed by Lawrence Reddick, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Suspecting an intentional oversight on the part of the Navy, Reddick wrote to the service and asked if Miller’s name could be released so that it could be added to the center’s “Honor Roll of Race Relations.” The Navy complied, and Reddick publicly announced Miller’s heroism at Pearl Harbor on 12 March 1942.
Led by The Militant (a socialist newspaper), The Chicago Defender, and other black newspapers, the press at large ran stories about the young messman who had risked his life to try to save his captain, shot down enemy planes, and rescued shipmates. Some papers referred to him as “Dorie Miller, the first Negro hero,” while the nation’s black community quickly embraced him as an icon, alongside Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Paul Robeson, and Duke Ellington.
The black press focused vigorously on Miller, and civil rights groups demanded that he be awarded the Medal of Honor. (He would have been the first black American to gain the nation’s highest military decoration in the two world wars.) The Navy, meanwhile, now regarded him as acceptable for recruitment posters. Souvenir buttons bearing his image were sold in black communities, and folk songs were composed about him. One fanciful ballad told of how “Dorie was peeling sweet potatoes when the guns began to roar,” and how he grabbed a gun when he saw his captain “lying wounded on the floor.”
Keynoting a “Unity for Victory” rally of 6,000 people in Harlem in June 1942, Miller’s mother, Henrietta, declared: “Some say we colored people have nothing to fight for. We all have something to fight for. We have freedom to fight for. But we can’t fight this war by ourselves. We’ve got to put Jesus into it, for He has never lost a battle.”
Accolades from the Navy
Dorie Miller was assigned to the 9,950-ton heavy cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35) on 13 December 1941, and promoted to mess attendant, second class, then first class, and later ship’s cook, third class. He served on board the Indianapolis for 17 months.
Navy Secretary Knox commended Miller on 1 April 1942, but the proudest moment in his life came a few weeks later on 27 May. In Pearl Harbor, not far from where salvage work was under way on the hulk of the West Virginia, Miller stood on the windswept flight deck of the carrier Enterprise (CV-6) to be decorated, along with several other heroes. As he pinned a coveted Navy Cross on Miller’s chest—the second-highest military decoration a member of the Navy can earn—Admiral Nimitz stated, “This marks the first time in this conflict that such high tribute has been made in the Pacific Fleet to a member of his race, and I’m sure that the future will see others similarly honored for brave acts.”
Miller’ was cited for his “distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage, and disregard for his own personal safety during the attack on the fleet in Pearl Harbor.” He was subsequently awarded the Purple Heart, the American Defense Service Medal with Fleet Clasp, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and a World War II Victory Medal.
The War Department sent him on a national tour to promote enlistments. He completed his stint on board the Indianapolis when she returned to the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Bremerton, Washington, on 15 May 1943.
A New Assignment
A few weeks later, Miller was assigned to his fifth ship, the brand-new escort carrier Liscome Bay (CVE-56). One of the 50 Casablanca-class “jeep carriers” mass-produced in the Kaiser shipyards, the 14,000-ton, 19-knot flattop had been launched on 19 April 1943 and commissioned on 7 August 1943.
Miller was on board the Liscome Bay when she headed out for her first operation in the western Pacific war zone. Her skipper was Captain Irving D. Wiltsie, and she flew the flag of Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinix, the commander of Task Group 52.3. Comprising the escort carriers Liscome Bay, Corregidor (CVE-58), and Coral Sea (CVE-57), laden with a total of 48 Grumman FM-1 Wildcat fighters and 36 Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, the group was a component of Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s powerful U.S. 5th Fleet.
Admiral Mullinix’s force was assigned an important role, along with other carrier groups, in a major American offensive, Operation Galvanic, in the Gilbert Islands, 2,300 miles from Pearl Harbor. The jeep carriers’ primary function was to protect attack transports when Tarawa and Makin atolls were invaded on 20 November 1943, by assault troops of Major General Julian C. Smith’s 2d Marine Division and Major General Ralph C. Smith’s 27th Infantry Division, respectively. Planes from the Liscome Bay and her sister flattops shielded the transports during the invasion and then flew many sorties in support of the troops pushing inland. The atolls were captured after three days of bitter fighting and severe losses for the Marines on Tarawa.
Admiral Mullinix’s three escort carriers fought gallantly in their first action. Miller, his shipmates, and the Liscome Bay squadron (VC-39) experienced three hectic days and nights, and they expected that 24 November would bring more of the same. They were right. Time was running out because enemy naval units were closer than anyone realized.
During the night of 23 November, a Japanese G4M “Betty” bomber dropped flares to illuminate the American flattops for an aerial torpedo attack. By coincidence, a newly arrived enemy submarine, I-175, was stalking the carriers. The flares gave the sub a clear view of the Liscome Bay, then cruising near Butaritari Island, part of Makin Atoll. The carrier prepared for action in the early hours of 24 November. Flight quarters was sounded at 0450, general quarters 15 minutes later, and her air crews began to clamber into their planes.
‘A Roaring Inferno’
Five minutes later, Lieutenant Commander Sunao Tabata’s I-175 took advantage of a gap left by two escorting destroyers, the USS Hull (DD-350) and Franks (DD-554), which had been detached, and fired a spread of torpedoes at the Liscome Bay. One struck the ship’s starboard side, between the forward and after engine rooms. Two violent explosions rocked the carrier, and a column of bright-orange flames soared 1,000 feet. Fragments of the ship and airplanes were hurled into the air, and debris rained on other vessels as far as 5,000 yards away.
The carrier had been hit in the worst possible spot, the compartment where her bombs and torpedo warheads were stowed. The after portion of the ship was soon ablaze, and half of her had virtually disintegrated. More blasts shook the Liscome Bay, and she continued to burn furiously. “The entire ship seemed to explode,” reported Ensign D. D. Creech on board the Coral Sea, “and the interior of the ship glowed with flame like a furnace.”
Twenty-three minutes after her first hit, the Liscome Bay sank stern-first. She was the first of six U.S. Navy escort carriers to go down during the war. Destroyers could rescue only 55 officers and 217 sailors. A Navy report of the tragedy quoted witnesses as saying that “it was a miracle that anyone managed to escape such a roaring inferno.” Among the men who perished with the carrier were Admiral Mullinix, Captain Wiltsie, and Dorie Miller. The Navy Cross recipient was listed as missing and was not officially presumed dead until 25 November 1944.
Miller’s death shocked the black community, which by then was becoming increasingly active in the war effort, thanks largely to the efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and black labor leader A. Philip Randolph. The messman’s heroism on board the West Virginia inspired black servicemen as they sought to serve on equal terms in the segregated armed forces. As Willie Wright, a New Haven, Connecticut, disc jockey, said, “I used to see pictures of Miller in the church I attended as a youngster, and I wanted to learn more about him.”
Remembering the sacrifice of Dorie Miller, black men and women flocked to work in America’s aircraft factories, munitions plants, and shipyards. A million of them, including 600,000 women, toiled in defense plants during the war. Miller was an inspiration for thousands of black soldiers, sailors, and nurses as the war progressed.
The Navy never forgot its Navy Cross hero who had led the way for American black service members to take their place in the Allied struggle against fascist tyranny. A Knox-class frigate named the USS Miller (DE-1091) was commissioned on 30 June 1973. Miller has been memorialized in other ways. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority dedicated a memorial plaque on 11 October 1991 in the Miller Family Park at Pearl Harbor. Two schools in Texas are named for him: an elementary school in San Antonio and an intermediate school in Ennis. In 2010, the U.S. Postal Service honored Miller by unveiling a stamp bearing his likeness as part of the Distinguished Sailors collectible stamp series, which honors four legends of the Navy.
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Naval History and Heritage Command, Department of the Navy, Washington, DC.
Christopher Paul Moore, Fighting for America: Black Soldiers—The Unsung Heroes of World War II (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005).
Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers: A Graphic History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969).
Jack Sweetman, American Naval History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984).
Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 2000).