Posted on 01/17/2020 11:19:16 PM PST by LeoWindhorse
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day at Pearl Harbor Monday, the U.S. Navy is expected to announce that a new aircraft carrier will be named after Mess Attendant 2nd Class Doris Miller, the first African American to receive the Navy Cross for valor for his actions on Dec. 7, 1941, when he manned a machine gun on the USS West Virginia to fire back at attacking Japanese planes.
“I think that Doris Miller is an American hero simply because of what he represents as a young man going beyond the call of what’s expected,” said Doreen Ravenscroft, president of Cultural Arts of Waco (Texas), and team leader for the Doris Miller Memorial.
In 1941, an African American was not allowed to man a gun in the Navy, and as far as rank was concerned, “he could not really get above a messman level,” Ravenscroft said. His actions started to turn the tide, she added.
“Without him really knowing, he actually was a part of the Civil Rights movement because he changed the thinking in the Navy,” Ravenscroft said.
“In the end, the fact that he didn’t think about what could be repercussions — that wasn’t a thought, when, at the time and in war, he did what was needed in his way to defend the United States of America,” she said.
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Indeed he does, as he should.
The Arizona was my grandpa’s ship in the mid to late 1920s, worked down in the engine room. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked he was working as a crane operator in a factory that made tanks.
There was nothing civilized about the Japanese at that time - they were just as bad, if not worse, than the Nazis.
Querty is correct, Japan had overtly invaded China behind a fig leaf even smaller than the one Hitler used to justify his invasion of Poland. The Japanese considered China, then in the midst of civil war, weak and ripe for the plucking. Once they invaded, their behavior was as bad or as worse as the German-Soviet war in the Eastern Front.
The Rape of Nanking was both a literal rape of Chinese women and the figurative rape of the city. Japan was not out to civilize barbarians, it was out to seize and exploit another country. Japan killed between 10-20 million Chinese either directly or through war induced famine.
The Chinese civil war by contrast only killed about 6-10 million. The only greater catastrophe for China than the Japanese invasion was the "Great Leap Forward" where Chairman Mao managed to kill 18-45 million people through sheer economic incompetence.
If by civilized you mean murder millions of innocent people than your right. The only reason the Japanese of World War 2 aren’t thought of as mass murdering villains is because the Nazis industrialized their mass murder.
The idea that the Japanese as they were under Tojo and the Emperor could have civilized anything is pretty absurd. Go read up on the Rape of Nanking for starters.
Anyone paying attention knew that Japan was heading toward war with the west. They saw the European powers as weakened by Germany’s war on Europe. We had started rearming and were rapidly working to improve and reinforce defenses across the Pacific.
What surprised us was the time, place, and manner of the attack. U.S analysts thought it would be later and focused upon a concentrated attack south. The Pearl Harbor strike was unexpected, even though there were all kinds of indicator that were much clearer in retrospect. Everyone had pieces of info, but no one drew the right conclusions.
This guy was a mess attendant, or in my words a cook.
With little to no combat skills, he took it upon himself to man a machine gun. Now that does take guts. Was he a hero? Most certainly yes.
However, how many other cooks, clerks and non-combatant types took to the task of operating heavy guns against the Japs on that day? With regards to other wars, the same question applies. Should these cooks and clerks get medals, ships named after them and other awards simply because they went outside their MOS? Because they fired along side their grunt buddies, doing the same thing, the cook and clerk get recognition, the grunt just gets shot at the next time?
If you join (or drafted), you are there to fight, no matter what your MOS is.
Michael Bay in his movie “Pearl Harbor” featured Doris Miller’s story. One of the highlights of the movie.
They're building the America class now. According to the navy.mil website, LHA-9 is planned but not yet named. I suspect that will become the USS Miller come Monday.
My mother was 26 and had one or two of her girlfriends spending the night, on the other side of Diamond Head from Pearl. They heard the bombs going off but thought nothing of it because they heard bomb training regularly. Then they heard neighbors, talking excitedly, coming over. The radio came on, then she and her friends went to the living room. She was on the next ship out because the prospect of invasion was not remote.
Is this the man Cuba Gooding Jr portrayed in the movie, Pearl Harbor?
At first I thought you were joking, or sarcasm....
....Seriously?....are you serious?
..a man eating lunch one floor below where Oswald was in Dallas was named Bonnie Ray. I had a distant cousin who was all man, was named Joyce. Names are just names...
You must have never heard of Nanking
They were the ties worse than the Nazis
They would and could not civilize anybody
now days, you support our Iranian enemy by opposing the sanctions that are certain to result to an Iranian Pearl Harbor attack
For every combat award, there are many other warriors who did as much or more than the awardee. Acts of heroism and sacrifice may be relatively common, but they should not be considered commonplace. Recognizing valor in one man, does not disparage any other.
During WWII, it was common to pull “heroes” out for PR duty. Do you think many. Can you imagine ow hard that would have been for most?
It is the first U.S. Navy ship named for an openly gay leader.[5] The first cut of steel occurred on 13 December 2019, marking the beginning of construction of the vessel.
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