It was a little before 6 a.m. when Ships Cook Doris Miller reported for duty aboard the battleship West Virginia. Dorie, as he was known, had enlisted in the United States Navy on September 1939 from his home town of Waco, Texas. He was the third of four sons and grew up desperately poor as many did during the 1930’s. For Dorie, being a Black American didn’t win him any favors and he would often get into fights at school over racist taunts. Life in an all segregated Navy wasn’t easy, but at least it provided “three hots and a cot” and being stationed at Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu wasn’t bad duty for a young man who spent his youth in a dusty, dry Texas town. He was recently promoted to the position of main cook on the West Virginia and spent his days in the hot, cramped kitchen aboard ship preparing meals for the 1,407 officers and men.
The time was a little after 7:45 a.m. on December 7th, 1941 and Dorie was busy collecting laundry from the kitchen when the general quarters klaxon aboard ship began to sound. Suddenly, he felt a shudder run through the ship and when he emerged on deck to reach his battle station, it was like walking into hell itself. The entire battleship row was on fire…….it seemed as if every ship had been hit by some sort of air raid. It took Dorie a few minutes to realize that Pearl Harbor was under attack by what could only be Japanese aircraft. Dorie ran to his battle station, an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidship, only to discover it had been destroyed by an aerial torpedo, which is the shudder he felt earlier. All around him wounded men screamed in agony while the attack continued.
Dorie was a big man at 5’9” and 200 lbs, so he was able to easily move the wounded. As he started to carry his fellow wounded sailors to safer locations, he was order to report to the bridge to assist in rescuing Captain Bennion who had just been mortally wounded by a bomb splinter. Captain Bennion refused all aid and insisted he not be moved from the bridge of his ship. He died from his wounds a few minutes later.
Returning to the deck below, Dorie spied an unmanned .50 caliber anti-aircraft machine gun. He quickly loaded a belt into the big gun, pulled back the cocking lever and started hammering away at the Japanese airplanes that filled the sky around Pearl Harbor. Despite having never been trained on how to use the .50, Dorie kept firing until he ran out of ammunition.
Nearby, the USS Arizona was engaged in a similar fight for her life. It was sometime during the second wave of attacks that a Japanese armor-piercing bomb was dropped onto the Arizona. The bomb penetrated the armored deck and detonated in the main powder magazine. The resulting explosion vented out through the sides of the ship destroying much of the interior structure and over 1,177 crewmembers were instantly incinerated in the fireball. In an odd twist of fate, the massive explosion on the Arizona actually put out all fires on the repair ship Vestal, which was moored alongside. Eyewitnesses saw the Arizona actually leap out of the water as she exploded and debris from the stricken ship fell onto Ford Island nearby.
Back on the West Virginia, the order to abandon ship was given after she was struck by two armor piercing bombs and no less than five torpedoes which flooded the ship and caused her to settle into the mud of the harbor.
In 90 minutes time, the Japanese had managed to destroy and sink four battleships, two destroyers and over 180 aircraft, plus kill over 2400 sailors and marines. Numerous other ships were heavily damaged, but were repaired and sent back into service.
Doris Miller was awarded the Navy Cross for extraordinary courage in battle by Admiral Chester Nimitz on May 27th, 1942. Many felt that he should have been awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions that day.
On November 24th , 1943 during the battle for Tarawa, Petty Officer, Ship’s Cook Third Class Doris Miller was aboard the escort carrier Liscome Bay when she was struck by a single torpedo from a Japanese submarine. The torpedo set off an explosion in the aircraft bomb magazine that sank the ship within minutes. His parents were notified of his death on December 7th, 1943.
