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Timeline
Doris Miller’s life, and what has been done in his name since. Entries marked reported rest on a single secondary source; entries with no date are entries where no document gives one.
Span1919 – 2026
EntriesForty
Last reviewed27 August 2026
The life
Twenty-four years. Four of them in uniform, and roughly thirty minutes of them famous.
1919 – 1939
Texas
- 12 October 1919Born in McLennan County, Texas, third of four sons of Connery and Henrietta Miller, sharecroppers. Sources give the place variously as Waco, Willow Grove and Speegleville.
- 1920s – 1930sWorks his father’s cotton farm; attends the A. J. Moore school in Waco, where he plays fullback; cooks in a Waco restaurant during the Depression.
- 16 September 1939Enlists at the Naval Recruiting Station, Dallas, as Mess Attendant Third Class — the Steward’s Branch being the only branch of the Navy open to Black enlistment. Recruit training at Norfolk, Virginia.
1939 – 1941
USS West Virginia
- Late 1939Assigned to the ammunition ship USS Pyro (AE-1).
- 2 January 1940Transfers to the battleship USS West Virginia (BB-48).
- July 1940 — reportedTemporary duty aboard USS Nevada (BB-36) attending Secondary Battery Gunnery School, returning to West Virginia on 3 August. Single secondary source; not in the Navy’s official history.
- Undated — reportedBecomes the ship’s heavyweight boxing champion. Carried by the ship’s veterans’ association and by the Naval Institute; no primary document located.
Times
Where the officers’ statements give a clock time, it is used. Where they do not, the entry says so.
7 December 1941
The morning
- c. 0755“Away fire and rescue party” is passed; general quarters about thirty seconds later. Two heavy shocks felt forward on the port side.
- 0756 – 0805Torpedo hits. List to port reaches an estimated 28 degrees. Lieutenant Ricketts obtains the captain’s permission and begins counterflooding, which keeps her from capsizing.
- Early in the attackCaptain Mervyn Bennion is struck in the abdomen by a fragment on the flag bridge and refuses to be taken below.
- Shortly afterArizona’s forward magazines explode; burning debris rains on West Virginia’s quarterdeck.
- Time not recordedMiller is on the bridge, listed among those present. He is one of four men who carry Bennion aft to the navigation bridge.
- Time not recordedMiller and Lieutenant (jg) F. H. White man the two machine guns forward of the conning tower. No document gives a duration or credits a result.
- Before the guns stopReady-box ammunition is expended; the ammunition train from below is flooded.
- c. 0825The attack ends after roughly thirty minutes. Bennion is dead. Abandon ship is passed over the port bow.
- 8 December 1941Fires aboard West Virginia finally extinguished, Monday afternoon.
The gap
Between the attack and the release of his name: eighty-nine days.
1941 – 1943
Recognition, and the end
- 11 December 1941Lieutenant Commander R. H. Hillenkoetter signs the West Virginia action report. Miller is named in paragraph 2 and in enclosure (H) — the only enlisted man singled out.
- 13 December 1941Detached from West Virginia; joins the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35).
- 22 December 1941A story in the New York Times quotes an unnamed naval officer describing a Black sailor who had “never before fired a gun.” The origin of a line still repeated today.
- Winter 1941–42Walter White of the NAACP presses Roosevelt and Secretary Knox to recognise the unnamed messman. Black newspapers run coupons urging his admission to the Naval Academy; the Navy declines on age grounds.
- March 1942The Pittsburgh Courier obtains and publishes his name, with research help from Lawrence D. Reddick of the Schomburg Collection.
- 30 March 1942Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox signs a letter of commendation, addressed to Miller as Mess Attendant First Class and routed via the commanding officer of USS Indianapolis.
- 11 May 1942 — reportedRoosevelt approves the Navy Cross.
- 27 May 1942Admiral Chester Nimitz presents the Navy Cross at Pearl Harbor. NHHC places the ceremony aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6).
- 1 June 1942The Navy opens general service to Black enlistment for the first time since the First World War.
- 7 August 1942An Act of Congress re-orders the Navy’s decorations, moving the Navy Cross above the Distinguished Service Medal — ten weeks after Miller received his.
- Dec 1942 – Jan 1943War bond and recruiting tour: Oakland, Waco, Dallas, and Great Lakes Naval Training Station. The first African American sent on it.
- 1943, reportedly 1 JuneRated Ship’s Cook Third Class — a petty officer rating.
- 7 August 1943USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) commissioned at Vancouver, Washington.
- 20 November 1943Operation Galvanic begins; Liscome Bay supports the Gilberts landings.
- 24 November 1943Before dawn, off Butaritari, I-175 torpedoes Liscome Bay. Her bomb stowage detonates and she is gone in about twenty-three minutes. Between 646 and 702 men die, depending on the source. Miller is among them.
- December 1943His parents are notified that he is missing.
- 25 November 1944Officially presumed dead, one year and a day after the sinking.
After
Eighty years of memorials, and a Medal of Honor that has never arrived.
1948 – 2026
Since
- 26 July 1948Executive Order 9981 desegregates the armed forces — five years after Miller’s death, and the actual end of the policy that confined him to the Steward’s Branch.
- 1950 – 1953The Dorie Miller Cooperative Houses are built in Corona–East Elmhurst, Queens, New York: six towers, 301 families, racially integrated.
- 1957 — reportedFire destroys the Miller family home in Waco, along with his medals and correspondence.
- 3 June 1972USS Miller (DE-1091) launched at Avondale, Louisiana. Sponsor: Henrietta Miller, his mother.
- 30 June 1973USS Miller commissioned.
- 1975Ronald Reagan, then a private citizen, tells an audience Miller shot down four dive bombers and that segregation in the armed forces ended at Pearl Harbor. Neither claim is true.
- 15 October 1991USS Miller decommissioned; struck from the Naval Vessel Register 11 January 1995.
- 27 May 1997Texas House Resolution 1138 honours him, and states he downed four enemy bombers — a figure no document supports.
- 4 February 2010The U.S. Postal Service issues the Distinguished Sailors stamps: Miller with William S. Sims, Arleigh A. Burke and John McCloy. Designed by Phil Jordan; 25 million printed.
- 18 December 2014Public Law 113-256 names the Waco VA facility the Doris Miller Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
- December 2017The Doris Miller Memorial is dedicated on the Brazos River in Waco — a nine-foot bronze by Eddie Dixon within a 170-foot structure shaped like a battleship’s hull.
- 7 January 2020H.R. 5549, to authorise the Medal of Honor, introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson. Dies in committee.
- 20 January 2020On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly announces at Pearl Harbor that the future CVN-81 will be named USS Doris Miller.
- 25 August 2021Ceremonial first cut of steel for CVN-81 at Newport News.
- 7 December 2021Eightieth anniversary ceremony at the Waco memorial, beginning at 11:55 a.m. — the moment of the attack in Central time. Bronze reliefs of his life unveiled.
- 28 February 2023H.R. 1251 introduced by Rep. Kweisi Mfume. Dies in committee.
- 25 March 2025H.R. 2335 introduced by Rep. Mfume on National Medal of Honor Day. Referred to House Armed Services, where it remains.
- May 2026CVN-81 delivery slips from February 2032 to February 2034. Keel not yet laid.
- 21 August 2026Reports that the Navy is internally considering renaming CVN-81. Unconfirmed; no renaming has taken place. Detail →
Sources
Each entry above is drawn from the sources listed on the relevant page: Biography, December 7, 1941, The Machine Gun, Navy Cross and Medal of Honor, The Ships and Memorials. The consolidated list is on the Sources page. Entries marked reported rest on a single secondary source and are not independently confirmed.