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Corrections and Contact
If something here is wrong, this is the page that fixes it. Corrections are made in public and dated, including corrections to this site’s own earlier mistakes.
Most useful of all
A document. A service record, a letter, a newspaper page, a photograph with its identifier.
Get in touch
Three things worth writing about
An error
A date, a rank, a ship, a name, a citation. Say which page and, if you can, what the correct version is and where it comes from. A correction with a source attached can be made the same day; one without takes longer, because it has to be researched from scratch.
A document
This is the most valuable thing anyone can send. Several claims on this site are marked unverified purely because the settling document has not been read — Miller’s service record in Record Group 24, the original Navy Cross award document, the 1942 Congressional Record, the newspaper page of 22 December 1941. If you hold any of them, or a scan, or a citation precise enough to order one, it will be examined and the relevant page changed.
Family papers, photographs and recollections are welcome too — and will be described as what they are. Testimony is a source; it is not the same kind of source as a typed report filed four days after the event, and this site does not pretend otherwise.
A disagreement
If you think a judgement here is wrong — that a claim marked unsupported is in fact supported, or that a source has been weighted badly — make the argument. Where sources genuinely conflict, this site prints the conflict rather than resolving it, and it would rather add a source to the disagreement than defend a position.
What happens next
Checked against the source, changed if wrong, dated, and credited.
How corrections work
In public, with a date
A correction is not a silent edit. When a page changes because something on it was wrong, the change is recorded with its date, so a reader can see what was altered and when.
That applies to this site’s own errors as much as to anyone else’s. A site whose entire argument is that other accounts should be checkable has no standing to make its own edit history invisible.
If a correction comes from you and you would like to be credited, say so. If you would rather not be named, say that instead — the correction still gets made.
Before writing
The unverified list on the Sources page may already answer the question.
Contact
Write to us
Two things this site is often asked and cannot help with. It has no connection to the Miller family and cannot pass on messages to them. And it is not affiliated with the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, the Doris Miller Memorial in Waco, or any memorial committee — enquiries about the memorial itself should go to Waco Parks and Recreation, and enquiries about the archive to The Texas Collection at Baylor.
Research enquiries
For original records, two institutions hold most of what matters: the National Archives at St. Louis (Record Group 24, military personnel files) and the Doris Miller Archive at The Texas Collection, Baylor University. Both are listed with links on the Sources page. This site is a reader of those collections, not a custodian of them.
Currently unverified — help wanted
If you can settle any of these with a document, please write.
- Whether Miller attended Secondary Battery Gunnery School during temporary duty aboard USS Nevada in July 1940.
- Whether he was the West Virginia’s heavyweight boxing champion.
- The dates of his advancement to Mess Attendant First Class and to Ship’s Cook Third Class.
- The exact wording of the original Navy Cross award document, as opposed to the version quoted in later legislation.
- The bill numbers and sponsors of the 1942 Medal of Honor legislation.
- The text of the 22 December 1941 newspaper story, from a digitised original.
- The exact dedication date, cost and funders of the Waco memorial.
- Whether Miller is listed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial.
- The final disposal of USS Miller (FF-1091) after she was struck in 1995.
This list is kept current. When an item is settled it comes off, and the change is dated on the page it affected. Editorial policy · Sources
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