Dorie Miller was born in Texas in 1919. His mother had hoped her third child would be a daughter and hadn’t given thought to a name other than Doris. He grew to be 6’3” and 200lbs, so no one would dare make fun of his feminine name. He could have earned a football scholarship but dropped out of school when he was 17 and enlisted in the Navy when he was 20. He felt the need to support his family.
At the time, the only positions available to African Americans were to support the White sailors. Dorie became a mess attendant, eventually elevated to cook third class on the USS West Virginia, stationed at Pearl Harbor.
On December 7, 1941, his ship was attacked by the Japanese. He ran from below deck to the ship’s surface to find a captain and several crew under fire. He pulled them to safety.
He then returned to the bridge, found a 50-caliber anti-aircraft gun, and started firing at the Japanese planes as they came in close to his ship.
He had never been trained on the gun but had hunted as a youth. He had also been observant of the white sailors as they were being trained on the gun.
Dorie did considerable damage to the Japanese. It is estimated that he brought down 2-6 of their warplanes. When he ran out of ammunition, he abandoned the ship before it sank.
The story of Dorie’s heroism began to circulate, but Dorie wasn’t known at first to be the sailor who had performed the heroic acts. The Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper, put pressure on the Navy to identify Dorie. Eventually, he was identified.
The Navy Secretary, Frank Knox, was a segregationist and was concerned that if Dorie’s story got out, he would face pressure to open up more opportunities for African American sailors. When President Roosevelt heard Dorie’s story, he ordered that Dorie be given the second-highest medal for men in combat: the Navy Cross.
Admiral Chester Nimitz presented the medal on May 27, 1942. Dorie was the first African American to be honored. Dorie continued to serve. He was assigned to an escort carrier, the USS Liscome Bay, operating in the Pacific. On November 24, 1943, Dorie’s ship was struck by a torpedo. His body was never recovered.
On Martin Luther King Day in 2020, Dorie Miller became the first African American to have a Navy aircraft carrier named in his honor. Prior to that, his mother had christened a destroyer escort named for him.
Hidden heroes often rise to great feats when in crisis. Such was the case of Dorie Miller, who the Navy had originally relegated to the ship’s mess.
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“It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger, and she worked fine. I guess I fired her about 15 minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”–Dorie Miller (when asked what was going through his mind when he started firing the anti-aircraft gun)