Illustration by Dave Seeley

STANDARDS

Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.7, RH.6-8.9, WHST.6-8.2, WHST.6-8.4, WHST.6-8.7, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.4, RI.6-8.7, RI.6-8.9, W.6-8.2, W.6-8.4, W.6-8.7, SL.6-8.1, SL.6-8.6

NCSS: Time, Continuity, and Change • Individual Development and Identity • Individuals, Groups, and Institutions

THE BIG READ

U.S. History

The Civil Rights Hero of World War II

In 1941, the bravery of a young Black sailor at Pearl Harbor would strike a massive blow against racial discrimination, helping set in motion a great movement for equality in America. 

As You Read, Think About: How does Dorie Miller show bravery? How do his actions lead to change?

Bettmann/Getty Images

Dorie Miller in his Navy uniform

December 7, 1941, began as a sleepy Sunday at Pearl Harbor, the United States naval base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Dorie Miller, a sailor aboard the battleship USS West Virginia, rose early and went about his morning tasks. As a mess attendant, Miller served food and cleaned tables in the officers’ dining hall. He made extra cash shining officers’ shoes and doing laundry.

The job of messman amounted to little more than being a servant. Miller was Black—and because of this, the U.S. Navy wouldn’t let him join at a higher rank. Black sailors could not become officers or be trained for combat. In units where they were allowed to serve, they were largely segregated from white sailors. There, as in the rest of the military and in American society, they were second-class citizens.

Yet on that fateful December day at Pearl Harbor, which would prompt the U.S. to enter World War II (1939-1945), Miller’s incredible acts of bravery would start to change all that. His selfless choices would help lead to integration of the nation’s military. Ultimately, say historians, his actions would help lay the groundwork for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s and the historic struggle for equal rights for Black Americans.

Japan Attacks!

At around 8 a.m. on December 7, Miller was doing laundry when battle alarms sounded. Just then, more than 350 Japanese aircraft began to rain down bombs and torpedoes on Pearl Harbor, including Miller’s battleship—the West Virginia—and six others docked close by.

Instantly, all was chaos. On the deck of the West Virginia, a U.S. plane overturned by the blasts started to leak gasoline. The fuel ignited, quickly spreading flames and thick black smoke. The ship had also been penetrated by torpedoes and began to tilt wildly to one side. Nearby, the battleship USS Arizona, which had been hit even harder, was now a ball of fire. Its flaming debris pelted the other ships and turned the waters around them, coated with leaking oil, into an inferno.

U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph/National Archives and Records Administration

The USS West Virginia lies sunken in the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. 

Japanese aircraft continued to swarm overhead as sailors scrambled to get to their battle stations. In the rush of activity, Miller headed to a central area looking for instructions. An officer directed him and a white lieutenant, Frederic White, to move the ship’s gravely wounded captain to safety.

Smoke, fire, and searing heat made that almost impossible. As the two sailors attempted to lower the captain to the main deck, White spotted two unmanned anti-aircraft machine guns. He signaled to Miller to help him with the guns.

The officer expected the messman to simply help load ammunition, as he had been trained to do. Instead, Miller—who had never before operated an anti-aircraft device—jumped on one of the guns and began firing at the Japanese planes.

Miller was “blazing away as though he had fired [the gun] all of his life,” one officer said.

“It wasn’t hard,” Miller later said. He had watched other sailors shoot them. “I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine.” Another officer would later report that Miller was “blazing away as though he had fired [the gun] all of his life.”

Miller and White shot until they ran out of ammunition. After that, they tried to fight the raging fire with a fire hose—barely escaping themselves. Then, as the oil-slicked sea continued to burn, Miller and White began pulling sailors who had fallen into the water back onto the West Virginia deck. Finally, the crew was ordered to abandon ship. Miller was one of the last to leave, helping others dodge patches of flaming water and Japanese bullets as they swam to shore.

What You Need to Know

AP Images

During the struggle over the island of Okinawa, U.S. Marines battled unrelenting Japanese air raids and sniper fire, tropical disease, and heat.

War in the Pacific: The attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a bold campaign by Japanese forces to expand their control over the Pacific Ocean during World War II. The U.S. and its allies fought back in a series of bloody struggles over islands whose names—including Midway, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima—have become legendary. Millions of troops and civilians were killed in the Pacific. The Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945, marked the end of World War II.

The U.S. Joins the War

The surprise attack by Japan’s forces remains one of the most shocking events in U.S. history. In just about two hours, 21 ships and hundreds of planes were damaged or destroyed. Some 2,400 Americans were killed.

Up to that time, the U.S. had not been fighting in World War II. That conflict began in September 1939, when Nazi Germany launched a campaign to conquer Europe. War spread to the Pacific Ocean as Japan, seeing an opportunity to expand its military domination of that region, allied itself with the Axis powers of Germany and Italy (see “What You Need to Know,” above, and map, below).

The Pacific War

After the attack on Pearl Harbor (inset), the U.S. fought a series of bloody battles against the Japanese military for islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Jim McMahon/Mapman®

Even though the U.S. was technically neutral, it opposed Japan’s expansion of power. Japan’s leaders gambled that a bold strike on the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, which was stationed at Pearl Harbor, would cripple America’s ability to stop them.

News of the attack stunned the nation. The next day, December 8, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. Three days later, Japan’s allies Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.

As the U.S. prepared for the fight, Miller went back to work. With the West Virginia in need of major repairs, he was assigned to a new ship, the USS Indianapolis. Soon it was steaming across the Pacific Ocean, into action against Japan.

Illustration by Dave Seeley

Swarming Japanese aircraft rained bombs and torpedoes down on U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor.

A Time of Inequality

In both his professional and personal lives, Dorie Miller was a link between an old America and a changing one. He was born in Waco, Texas, in 1919, a place and time in which the legacy of slavery affected nearly every aspect of Black people’s lives.

Just two generations before him, Miller’s grandparents had been enslaved. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865 by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Southern states including Texas enacted racist laws and policies that denied Black people the right to vote or hold many jobs. Black people were also forced to use separate and inferior public facilities, including schools and hospitals.

Racial inequality was a fact of life all over the United States, including in the armed forces.

But racial inequality wasn’t limited to the South. It was a fact of life all over the country—including in the armed forces. Black Americans had served in every one of the nation’s wars. Yet in part because military leaders believed that white soldiers would not tolerate fighting alongside Black soldiers, the races were kept separate.

Even so, Black leaders had long urged people in their communities to join the military. It would, they said, prove that Black Americans were patriotic—and that they deserved equal rights.

“Make way for Democracy!” wrote the noted Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois in 1919, as Black veterans returned from serving in Europe during World War I (1914-18). “We saved it in France and . . . we will save it in the United States of America.”

In 1939, with few opportunities available for him in Waco, Texas, Miller joined the Navy. In addition to being a messman, he was instructed in a task he might have to take on in an emergency: handing ammunition to the operator of an anti-aircraft gun.

Slideshow

Searching for a Hero

New Pittsburgh Courier

The Pittsburgh Courier IDs a new hero.

Then came the Pearl Harbor attack. Miller’s actions that day would make him a hero. But for months, his identity was not publicly known.

In reports to Navy officials after December 7, men of the West Virginia praised Miller’s bravery. He had “unquestionably [saved] the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost,” wrote the ship’s senior officer. Yet officially, the Navy cited Miller’s actions as those of an unknown Black sailor.

That is, until the Pittsburgh Courier got wind of the story. An influential newspaper for Black Americans, the Courier was pursuing what it called a “Double V campaign”— victory over the Axis powers abroad and over racist policies at home. Its editors believed that publicizing Miller’s identity would be key in the fight for racial equality.

They searched intensely until, in March 1942, the paper uncovered Miller’s name. “ ‘Messman Hero’ Identified,” it announced in a front-page headline. In the next few days, the Courier's story ran in newspapers all over the country.

Public interest in Miller soared. Members of Congress demanded that he be given the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery in battle. Black leaders echoed the call.

Navy officials resisted, however. Then President Roosevelt and Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, stepped in. They were eager to encourage Black Americans to support the war effort and knew acknowledging Miller’s heroism would help. In May 1942, when Miller’s ship made a stopover at Pearl Harbor, Nimitz awarded the young sailor the Navy Cross, the service’s third-highest award. Miller became the first Black American to receive the medal.

An American Journey

Suddenly, Miller was famous—so famous that in November, the Navy sent him on a multicity tour to promote war bonds, an honor normally reserved for white celebrities. Everywhere he went, Black Americans flocked to see him. His image appeared everywhere on Navy recruitment ads and posters.

Always modest, Miller spoke of his pride in belonging to the Navy. He also seemed to understand that he was part of a change coming to America. “I believe that young Negroes* will struggle for their full rights when this war is over,” he told a reporter. “I know I will.”

Still, getting back to sea was his priority. Now promoted to cook, Miller soon had his next assignment, aboard the USS Liscome Bay. In November 1943, the ship sailed back into action. That month, it supported the Marines in the battle of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands as the U.S. successfully took the atoll from Japanese forces.

The day after the battle was over, however, the Liscome Bay was hit by a Japanese torpedo and sank. Only 272 men of the 900 aboard survived. On December 7, 1943, two years to the day after Pearl Harbor, Dorie Miller’s parents were informed that their son was “missing in action.”

Time Life Pictures/National Archives/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

Admiral Chester Nimitz awards Miller the Navy Cross. 

The Quest for Equality

The full impact of Miller’s actions in World War II came gradually. During the war, the Navy relaxed the rules that segregated its forces and also began training Black officers. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman officially desegregated the U.S. armed forces. Many historians have given a lot of credit for these advances to the actions of the young messman at Pearl Harbor.

However, racial discrimination remained legal throughout the U.S. It took the civil rights movement, which began in earnest nearly a decade later, to begin to bring real change to the whole country.

Historian Michael Parrish, co-author of a book on Miller, draws a straight line between the events at Pearl Harbor and the momentous struggle for civil rights. “Miller’s heroism started a chain reaction,” he says. “World War II was the first war in U.S. history in which the huge sacrifices by Black servicemen made a significant difference in Black Americans’ quest for equality.”

Today, Miller’s name lives on in military barracks, schools, and parks around the country. And last year, the Navy made a historic announcement. It is naming a new ship—an aircraft “supercarrier”— after the messman. Such an honor is usually given only to American presidents. The USS Doris Miller** will be the first supercarrier named after an enlisted sailor—and the first after a Black American.

That honor would have seemed just to the crusading Pittsburgh Courier. “He died for his country that his people might rise another notch in dignity and courage,” one editor wrote in 1956. “Every blow struck for civil rights is a monument to Dorie Miller, citizen.”

*The term Negro, once commonly used to refer to Black people, is now considered outdated and offensive.

**Miller’s given name was Doris Miller. Dorie was his nickname.

Write About It! How did Dorie Miller’s brave actions help change the military and lead to progress toward racial equality in the U.S.? Include details from the article to support your ideas.

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