THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512010491
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Doris Miller, the African-American naval mess attendant whose bravery during the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, gained him the Navy Cross, received his basic training in Norfolk.
Miller, better known as ``Dorie'' by his shipmates, was named Doris because after two sons had been born to his parents they figured their third child would be a girl. They picked the name Doris for their new baby before it was born and when it turned out to be a boy - they decided to stick to their decision.
Born on a 28-acre farm near Waco, Texas in 1919, Miller was a son of Connery Miller, a hard-working sharecropper, and Mrs. Henrietta Miller. Despite his feminine given name, young Miller was an inordinately robust boy and wound up as the star fullback on the football team of Waco's Moor High School. Yearning for wider horizons other than his home territory, which had been hard hit by the Great Depression, Miller tried to enlist in the Army. When that attempt was unsuccessful he attempted to sign up for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Rebuffed, he enlisted in the Navy in Dallas, Texas in September 1939, at which time he was an abnormally strong 19-year-old six footer weighing over 200 pounds.
From Dallas, Miller was sent to the Norfolk Naval Training Station where he was indoctrinated as a mess attendant. His first assignment was aboard the ammunition ship Pyro, from there he was transferred to the battleship West Virginia in January 1940.
Fame overtook him there a little less than two years later when the massive Japanese attack was launched on Pearl Harbor. At that time the West Virginia was not only transformed into a raging inferno by explosions caused by the enemy's bombs and torpedos, it also lost its skipper, Capt. Mervyn Bennion who died a hero's death while defending his ship.
This is how Gordon W. Prange tells the story, including Miller's heroism, in At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (Penguin, 1981):
``A large piece of shrapnel struck Bennion in the stomach and wounded him. Beatie (i.e. another officer) sent for a pharmacist's mate and Lieutenant Commander Dior C. Johnson hurried up with a big, well-built black mess attendant, Dorie Miller. He had been the ship's heavyweight boxing champion, and Johnson thought he was just the man to lift the captain out of danger. The chief pharmacist's mate dressed Bennion's wound as best he could. As smoke and flames engulfed the ship, Bennion ordered his subordinates to leave him where he was, the only order of his they ever disobeyed. He remained conscious, asking questions about the progress of the flight almost to the last. After he died, Johnson saw Miller, who was not supposed to handle anything deadlier than a swab, man a machine gun blazing away as though he had fired one all his life. As he did so, his unusually impassive face bore the deadly smile of a berserk Viking.''
It was Miller's first experience with such a weapon. Later he was quoted as saying ``It wasn't hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched others with these guns. I guess I fired her about fifteen minutes. I got one of those planes. They were diving close to us.''
Soon afterward Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for ``distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety.'' Unfortunately, Miller did not long survive his recognition by all well-thinking Americans of his valour. While serving aboard the carrier Liscombe Bay he lost at sea in November 1943 when his ship was sunk by a Japanese submarine.
But the Navy did not forget Miller. In 1973, when the destroyer escort ship (DE 1091) Dorie Miller was commissioned at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, he became the third black person up until that time to have a U.S. naval vessel named for him. The others were the Jesse L. Brown and the missile submarine George Washington Carver.
Miller's 77-year-old mother was present at the ceremony at which time she said, ``This is a great honor. Whenever someone of my color has an honor or anything I feel proud of it.'' Also present was U.S. Rep. Barbara Jordan of Texas who said the commissioning of the Dorie Miller was evidence that the Navy ``was shaking off the shackles of past prejudice,'' adding ``More and more blacks are entering the service. I am confident that the Navy will continue providing blacks with the chance to become captains as well as cooks.''
Jordan's words were prophetic, for even though the ship named for Dorie Miller is no longer in commission, hundreds of African Americans from admirals downward have subsequently served their country with honor and distinction. by CNB