The U.S. Navy announced on January 20, 2020 that CVN 81 would carry the name USS Doris Miller, placing the legacy of a Pearl Harbor hero on the service’s next Ford-class aircraft carrier. The decision made the ship the first Navy aircraft carrier named for an African American or an enlisted Sailor.
The name matters because Doris Miller was not a symbol made in hindsight. He was born on October 12, 1919, enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1939 and went to work as a ship’s mess attendant before the war pushed him into history. On December 7, 1941, he was doing laundry below decks of the USS West Virginia when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Miller manned gun stations, fired a 0.50-caliber antiaircraft gun until he ran out of ammunition and had no previous training on the weapon. He also carried wounded sailors to safety and kept helping after the order to abandon ship. For that conduct, he received the Navy Cross, the first ever awarded to an African American.
Admiral Chester Nimitz presented that medal aboard the USS Enterprise on May 27, 1942. By then, the USS West Virginia, a 32,600-ton Colorado-class battleship and one of four battleships lost at Pearl Harbor, had been hit by at least seven torpedoes and two bombs before sinking to the bottom of the harbor. Miller later rose to ship’s cook, third class, before dying on November 24, 1943 aboard the Liscome Bay with 643 others after the escort carrier suffered torpedo damage. The ship went down 20 miles southwest of Butaritari Island in the Pacific Ocean nearly 2,400 miles northeast of Australia.
The Navy’s earlier USS Miller was commissioned in 1973 as a Destroyer Escort, later reclassified as a Frigate and removed from the Naval Registry in 1995. That vessel was the first Navy ship named for him, but CVN 81 would have carried the tribute to a different scale: the Navy’s fourth Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, with a future delivery date scheduled for February 2032. It is also where the naming debate now matters most, because the ship has already been publicly announced as USS Doris Miller even as the Navy weighs whether to keep that name or choose another before delivery.
For now, the facts point in one direction. The carrier was named. The history was set down in public. What remains unsettled is whether the Navy will leave Doris Miller’s name on the bow or rewrite it before the ship reaches the fleet in February 2032.
