"So, for African Americans, many were messmen or stewards. "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. 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. Henry Kissinger called them "100,000 tons of diplomacy," and that power has long been reflected in the Navy's conventions for naming them.ĭoris Miller, who went by "Dorie" in the Navy, was one of the first American heroes of World War II.ĭuring 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.Īs a Black sailor in 1941, he wasn't supposed to fire a gun even.
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