Dorie Miller: The mess hall machine gunner of Pearl Harbor
When Lt. Cmdr. Shigeharu Murata launched the first of nine Japanese torpedoes to hit the U.S.S. West Virginia, Doris “Dorie” Miller had just finished breakfast mess duty and was collecting dirty laundry. By adding the extra laundry duty, he earned an extra $5 a month to send back home to his family in Texas.
The explosions rocked the ship and our nation.
As Miller reached his combat station, he discovered it was already devastated from the initial attack, so he rerouted to “Times Square” at the intersection of the port to starboard and forward to aft passageways to await further instruction.
From there, Miller was ordered to carry the ship’s mortally wounded Capt. Mervin Bennion from the bridge to safer quarters. Unfortunately, Miller was forced to put down the captain just aft of the conning tower, when the cot used to carry him nearly broke.
The scene was unimaginably chaotic.
Seaman 1st Class Chris Beal on the nearby USS Maryland recalled: “I still remember their ‘banshee death wail’ as they dived on us, then the whistle of bombs, near misses and the engine regaining altitude as they pulled up over us….”
As sailors searched for materials to lower the captain, Lt. Frederick White loaded the two machine guns forward of the conning tower and assigned Miller to one of them. Miller didn’t know much about the weapon, but he fired away. In 1942, Miller recounted: “It wasn’t hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about 15 minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us.”
But it wasn’t merely his impromptu machine-gun fire that made him a hero. As the ship was sinking, Miller carried on. With a serious oil fire on deck and smoke billowing from the critically damaged hull, Miller helped rescue sailors from the water.
According to the action report from Cmdr. R.H. Hillenkoetter, Miller was “instrumental in hauling people along through oil and water to the quarterdeck, thereby unquestionably saving the lives of a number of people who might otherwise have been lost.”
Dorie Miller’s brave actions earned the mess hall and laundry attendant from Waco, Texas, the Navy Cross, the Navy’s highest medal.
Miller continued to serve in the Pacific until he was killed in action, when a Japanese submarine’s torpedo hit a bomb magazine on the U.S.S. Liscome Bay Nov. 24, 1943. The explosion sunk the ship within minutes and killed 646 of the 918 sailors on board.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget the names and faces of American heroes. We talk about them in broad positive strokes, express our love for our men- and women-at-arms and carry on. As joyous as military homecomings are —and should be—at sporting events or in our communities, so many never make it back.
A little more than a year after becoming the first African-American to win the Navy Cross, Miller was one of them.
He’s been honored in film, with countless awards and even had a Navy ship named in his honor, but he’s far from a household name. If you’re looking for a name and face to remember along with a true story to explain the price of freedom to the next generation, Dorie Miller isn’t a bad place to start.
