Though usually inclined toward pacifism, I'm a sucker for stories of military valor, and yesterday morning I almost leaped from bed after listening to this NPR story about the actions of Dorie Miller, an African-American sailor, on 7 December 1941. From the story:
During the attack on Pearl Harbor, as his battleship, the USS West Virginia, was sinking, the powerfully built Miller, who was the ship's boxing champion, helped move his dying captain to better cover, then jumped behind a machine gun and shot at Japanese planes until his ammunition was gone.
As a Black sailor in 1941, he wasn't supposed to fire a gun even. This means that when he reached for that weapon, he was taking on two enemies: the Japanese flyers and the pervasive discrimination in his own country.
"One of the ways in which the Navy discriminated against African Americans was that they limited them to certain types of jobs, or what we call 'ratings' in the Navy," said Regina Akers, a historian with the Naval History and Heritage Command. "So, for African Americans, many were messmen or stewards. Dorie Miller was a messman, which meant that he basically took care of an officer, laid out his clothes, shined his shoes and served meals.”
Akers said much of the attention at the time, and since, has been on Miller firing the anti-aircraft gun, which he wasn't even trained to do. In fact, it's a moment Hollywood briefly portrayed in several movies about the attack.
But Akers said what Miller did afterward is just as important: He began pulling injured sailors out of the burning, oil-covered water of the harbor, and was one of the last men to leave his ship as it sank, and continued getting sailors to safety afterward.
Miller was killed in 1943 when his ship was torpedoed. His body was never recovered. The occasion for the NPR story is a new naval supercarrier, now in the planning stage, which, when it's commissioned, will be christened the USS Doris Miller. Supercarriers are most commonly named after battle sites and presidents. The USS Doris Miller will be the first named for an enlisted man as well as the the first named after an African American.
By order of President Truman, the US military was fully integrated, with respect to race, in 1948. This put an end to the Navy's "ratings," which limited the positions in which African Americans could serve. Until recently, a similar ratings system limited the positions in which women could serve. But now that's been overturned too, thanks in part to the efforts of M.J. Hegar, this year's Democratic candidate for US Senate in Texas. She was disgusted that, despite having received a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross, she could not qualify for a ground combat unit on account of her gender. This biographical ad, developed for her unsuccessful run for a US House seat in 2018, tells part of that tale. Here is the citation for her Distinguished Flying Cross. She was copilot of a search and rescue helicopter in the Air National Guard. On a mission in Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, her chopper came under fire and crashed while airlifting some wounded soldiers out of a combat zone. Two other helicopters arrived on the scene to rescue Hegar, her copilot, and the wounded soldiers. When the wounded had been loaded in, the rescue aircraft lifted off while under attack. Hegar, who'd already taken a shrapnel wound in her shoulder, was strapped to the ski of one of the helicopters, and from her suspended position outside the chopper, exposed to the enemy, she returned fire as they sped away.
Hegar has elaborate tattoos on her arm that cover the scars. A conservative Texas PAC that supports her opponent, incumbent Republican John Cornyn, who is one of Trump's boot-licking enablers, aired a TV ad highlighting a picture of her in a sleeveless dress and charged that she's "Hard Left Hegar," a real radical since, you know, tattoos I guess. It's Texas, and Cornyn has as much money as God, so he'll probably be reelected, but if justice were to prevail . . . .
I've contributed to her campaign, here.
Comments