I’ve been reading news stories this morning that I still need to verify fully, but the gist of it is that the Navy is reportedly planning to rename the USS Doris Miller — an aircraft carrier — to the USS Donald Trump (NBC News, ABC News, The Hill; Snopes has a good rundown of what’s confirmed so far). Doris Miller was a hero of Pearl Harbor.
If you’ve seen the movie, Cuba Gooding Jr. played him, though that portrayal was heavily dramatized. I’ve read and heard in a few places that Miller’s actual contributions that day may have been overstated; there’s a real, long-running debate about it worth reading (see Pacific War Museum, JSTOR Daily, and Yahoo News). Supposedly someone had to show him how to operate the AA gun in the first place, which makes sense, because Doris Miller wasn’t a fighting sailor. At that time, Black men in the Navy simply weren’t allowed in those positions. If I remember correctly, he was a cook, or a kitchen aide, maybe even a valet to one of the officers; that was the only kind of job available to him.
But the Japanese attack on December 7th was a highly choreographed, meticulously planned and practiced operation. The Japanese Navy prepared for it in extraordinary detail: they even modified their torpedoes so they could be used in a harbor that would normally have been too shallow for them. They rehearsed the attack beforehand. They came to Pearl Harbor with everything they had.
I don’t personally care exactly what went down that day with respect to Doris Miller, down to the last detail. But any man who stood on the deck of a U.S. naval ship that day and returned fire in the face of an organized, relentless attack by the Japanese Navy is a hero whose name should never be forgotten by the people of the United States of America. There were many other brave sailors who fought and died that day and their names deserve to be remembered also. Whatever ship ends up carrying Doris Miller’s name or anyone else’s who fought that day, their extraordinary bravery and sacrifice should never be forgotten or, even worse, erased.