Posted on 12/07/2012 3:22:36 PM PST by NKP_Vet
Edited on 12/07/2012 3:24:14 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Mess Attendant First Class Doris "Dorie" Miller was born in Waco, Texas, in 1919, the son of a couple hard-working sharecroppers who had traveled the land working cotton fields. A man who would grow t o be one of the more unlikely heroes on one of America's darkest days, Miller spent every day of his youth on the edge of poverty, just struggling to survive and make ends meet. By the time he was a young man, his family had settled down, working as subsistence farmers, and as soon as he was old enough to push a plow he went to work busting his ass in the fields to make sure his family had enough food to eat. When he wasn't out providing food for his family, he went to school, trampled DBs as the star fullback on his high school team (no small feat in a place like Texas that, as far as I can tell, has always taken their high school football a little bit seriously), and worked nights as a cook at a local restaurant to help make some extra money during the Great Depression. So he was pretty busy. And he didn't have a problem busting his ass like a madman to make sure that things got done.
Boy named Sue, meet the man named Doris.
Don’t forget Vivian Thomas, the black high school educated janitor who invented open heart surgery.
Requires log in to that man who betrayed his biz partner and does not respect privacy.
Never shows up during Black History Month. Other questions to ask are: Who discovered the North Pole? Who’s been telling drivers what to do since about 1929 (or there abouts). Does A, A+, O, ABneg. mean anything to you?
Dorie Miller rose to the ocassion in WW2; now we have Obama who is failing the ocassion and got elected president twice. Something is wrong with this picture.
I’ll take ONE Dorie Miller over 1 million Obamas, any day, any place, any time.
Salute, DM!
PS: I once asked my still living father-in-law where he was on Dec. 7, 1941 and he said, “Getting bombed by the Japanese at Schofield Barracks.”
Then I asked him what was his last fight. He said “Iwo Jima”.
We’ve got one of those heroes in our family and proud of it.
Dorie Miller rose to the ocassion in WW2; now we have Obama who is failing the ocassion and got elected president twice. Something is wrong with this picture.
I’ll take ONE Dorie Miller over 1 million Obamas, any day, any place, any time.
Salute, DM!
PS: I once asked my still living father-in-law where he was on Dec. 7, 1941 and he said, “Getting bombed by the Japanese at Schofield Barracks.”
Then I asked him what was his last fight. He said “Iwo Jima”.
We’ve got one of those heroes in our family and proud of it.
Boy named Sue, meet the man named Doris
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The irony is that he was transferred to the Indianapolis after leaving the WV, they tracked him down and gave him his awards (Navy Cross) and eventually someone said it wasn’t ‘fair’ that White Heroes got to come back to the States for recruiting appearances, they brought him back, he did his tour and the ship he was assigned to next was sunk at Tarawa and Miller was missing and presumed dead.
Action Report, 11 December 1941; with 3 enclosures mentioning the actions of Dorie Miller
I once asked a coordinator of Black History Month if he had any into on Vivian Thomas. He said “Who’s she?” A half hour later he was properly ashamed that possibly one of the greatest and most unlikely Black American heroes had gone largely unrecognized. He was further surprised that a white guy had to tell him the story.
The rest of the article.
In 1939, the 19 year-old Miller enlisted in the Navy, presumably because this was going to be a little bit of a break from his non-stop life of frying delicious bacon and stiff-arming linebackers so hard that their skulls imploded. After completing Basic, he was assigned as a Mess Attendant Third Class on the awesomely-named USS Pyro, where he essentially served as a mix between a line cook, a waiter, and housekeeping staff. Sure, this wasn’t exactly the most glamorous gig in the Fleet, but in the 1930s it was one of the few Navy jobs available to Black sailors, and Miller was damn sure he wanted to serve his country and make some extra money to help provide for his family back home. It didn’t hurt the situation when he was transferred to the battleship USS West Virginia and sent out to enjoy the sunny beaches of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, filled with warm weather, hot babes, and picturesque palm trees. He dug living out on the island paradise, and when he wasn’t chilling on the beach he was getting some of his aggression out by face-punching the fucking bejeezus out of other men on his ship on his way to becoming the heavyweight boxing champion of the West Virginia — a warship of about 2,000 sailors and U.S. Marines. I can only imagine that grilling up a burger is a lot more awesome when the dude you’re cooking it for is sporting a nasty black eye because you’d just spent all morning pummeling him ruthlessly about the face and torso with your gigantic fists.
But the temporary stay in paradise wouldn’t last long.
At 8am on the morning of 7 December 1941, Mess Attendant Doris Miller was collecting laundry from the bunks when he heard a deafening roar overhead. Two hundred Japanese torpedo planes, fighters, and bombers of every conceivable flavor were bearing down on Hawaii on an insane sneak-attack bombing run that was soon to knock out the bulk of American battleship power in the course of a couple hours, and Miller suddenly found himself in the middle of the biggest military shitstorm to hit U.S. soil since the Civil War.
Well Dorie Miller was a guy who spent his entire life giving the death-stare to adversity, and he wasn’t about to let a trivial bullshit thing like the entire goddamned Japanese Naval Air Force stop him from being completely mecha-extreme to the max. His first instinct was one that had been drilled into him through months of training – get to your battlestation. Miller’s station was an anti-aircraft battery located on one of the middle decks of the ship, but no sooner did he get there than he realized that a Japanese torpedo had already blown it the fuck up, and now there was a huge hunk of twisted metal where there used to be a giant gun. Not one to be discouraged by this, he rushed up to the deck to see if there was anything he could do to help out.
At this point, the situation on the West Virginia was a grade-A five-alarm clusterfuck. Planes and bombers were shrieking overhead, unleashing their payloads, and Battleship Row was now little more than a goddamned shooting gallery for Japanese aircraft. Once again, Miller sacked up and did what he had to do. The biggest, strongest, toughest man aboard the ship, he immediately started running across the deck, grabbing wounded men and carrying them to safety on the quarterdeck, where the injured sailors and Marines were partially shielded from the machine guns of strafing Zeroes. After pulling a few men to safety, Miller saw that the ships commander – Captain Bennion – had been mortally wounded by a piece of shrapnel. Bennion was still conscious, trying to direct and command his men, and Miller knew he had to get his C.O. off the bridge and to a place where he would be safe. So Doris Miller sprinted across the deck, blitzing through smoke, water, and flaming oil while bullets zinged around him, grabbed the Captain, and carried him to safety as well.
Now, this in and of itself is some seriously epic heroism, but it’s just the beginning of Doris Miller’s badass cred. After saving the lives of his comrades by pulling them to safety, the heavyweight boxing champion of the USS West Virginia noticed the some of the deck guns were going unmanned, so he rushed over to a giant .50-caliber anti-aircraft machine gun, strapped himself in, and immediately went to work putting a giant curtain of bullets between West Virginia and the Japanese Naval Air Force.
Despite not having any training on how to operate the .50-cal (Miller had plenty of experience working hunting rifles back in Texas, so he figured it out pretty quickly), now the fucking ship’s cook was manning a deck gun, blasting Zeroes out of the sky with a stream of tracer fire from the heavy MG. With planes strafing overhead, bombs going off, and ships getting trashed around him, Miller held his ground for fifteen minutes straight, blasting away from his exposed position. During the battle two armor-piercing bombs blasted the deck of the West Virginia and five 18-inch torpedoes hit the port side, but this guy couldn’t be stopped by anything short of his ammunition supply – he only backed down after he ran out of bullets and his half-dead commanding officer ordered him to abandon ship.
The specific details of Dorie Miller’s efficiency with the .50 cal aren’t well-documented – his kill count ranges from “at least one” to “several” depending on who you ask – but you can’t deny the fact that the men of Pearl Harbor (and the citizens who would hear the story later) were inspired by the bravery of this incredible badass who had dropped his chef’s hat, saved the lives of a half-dozen Americans, and then blew the shit out of the enemies that were fucking with his battleship. Basically, he was Steven Segal from Under Siege.
“You’re not a cook.”
“Yeah, well... I also cook.”
Doris Miller survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, as did 1,500 of his fellow crewmen aboard West Virginia. When tales of his heroism reached the people of the U.S., they saw it as one of just a few bright spots amid one of the darkest days in American history. Yeah, the Japanese sucker-punched us in the balls, but at least we made them pay for it.
Miller personally received the Navy Cross – one of the Navy’s highest awards for bravery – from Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the American Pacific Fleet. Miller was one of the first black men to receive the Cross, and, as it happens, one of the first Americans of any ethnicity to win the Navy Cross for actions in World War II. Cities named Boys’ Clubs after him, he had a parade in Waco, he spoke at a commencement ceremony or two, and the public started a write-in campaign to get him admitted to the Naval Academy. Despite the accolades, Miller stayed humble. He was just doing his job. He continued working in the Mess, eventually getting promoted to Ship’s Cook First Class. He went back to the front, serving on the cruiser Indianapolis, and then later on the Liscome Bay, and spent the next two years tenaciously taking the fight to the Japanese. He was killed in action on 24 November 1943 when his ship was hit by a torpedo while supporting landing operations of the Pacific Island of Tarawa. Nowadays there are a bunch of parks and schools named after him, and in 1973 the Navy honored him as just the third black man to have an American warship named after him – the frigate USS Doris Miller. He’s also appeared on a postage stamp, and Cuba Gooding Jr. played him in a movie back when people still liked Cuba Gooding Jr.
He was portrayed by Cuba Gooding, Jr in “Pearl Harbor.” The one good character in that otherwise lame movie.
the author is certainly fixated on this mans butt
Well, the Indianapolis was sunk too
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Yes, the Indianapolis was sunk - in 1945, after delivering the components for the ABomb....the Carrier he was on got sunk in 1943
Now if he would have remained on the Indy and got lost then, it would really have been something - being at Pearl, surviving, delivering the ‘instrument’ that ended the war, then dying during the waning moments of the war.
Looks interesting, too bad it is facebook, whatever that is, so I can not read it.
I thought the actual attack scene in Pearl Harbor, where Gooding was featured, was pretty good. The rest of the movie sucked.
True, I can watch that part of it.
in 1971 i had to explain who the Tuskeege Airmen were to the appointed US Army Affirmative Action Officer who was teaching a class of officers about black history.
He never did return my book.
I’ve done that same thing too. My good one was who discovered the North Pole? They always come back with Robert Peary. I said nope. It was his Black navigator who told him he was there. His name was Matthew Henson.
“Boy named Sue, meet the man named Doris.”
Marion Morrison, anyone?
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