Editorial Policy

The standard

Every claim is traceable to a named source

This site exists because most of what is written about Doris Miller cannot be checked. Details entered print in 1941 or 1942 or 1975 and have been copied since without anyone returning to the file. The remedy is not to write a better-sounding account. It is to say, for every claim, where it came from.

So: every page carries its sources at the foot and a visible last-reviewed date. Where a claim rests on one source, the page says so in the text, not in a footnote. Where sources disagree, both are given, with their names attached.

Method

Six rules

1. Primary documents first

A document written at the time outranks one written later, which outranks a book, which outranks a website. The USS West Virginia action report of 11 December 1941 is the spine of this site because it was written four days after the event by men who were there, before anybody had a legend to protect.

2. Quotation marks are a promise

Anything inside them came off the page. Nothing on this site is quoted from memory or reconstructed from a paraphrase. Where two versions of a text circulate — as they do for the Navy Cross citation — the site says which version it is quoting and where the other one comes from.

3. Unsupported is not the same as false

When no document establishes a claim, the site says the claim is unsupported and stops. It does not assert the opposite. Absence of evidence is reported as absence of evidence — and a claim can be unsupported today and confirmed tomorrow by a file nobody has read yet.

4. Disagreements are shown, not resolved

Where official sources conflict, this site prints the conflict. The death toll of USS Liscome Bay is given by three U.S. Navy sources as 702, 683 and 646; two of those three are publications of the same command. The honest thing is to report the range and name each source, not to pick the most-repeated number and present it as settled.

5. Inference is labelled as inference

Lieutenant Commander Johnson’s statement describes bringing “a colored mess attendant…a very powerfully built individual” to the bridge. He is almost certainly Miller. He is not named, so this site calls the identification an inference every time it appears.

6. Wikipedia is not a source

It is a useful index of leads. It is not cited here, and claims found only there are treated as unsourced until a document is located.

Images and rights

What is reproduced, and what is only linked

Photographs on this site are works of the United States Government, or are released under CC0. Each carries its archival identifier and a full credit line, listed on the Image Credits page.

Some things are deliberately not reproduced:

• The Waco memorial sculpture — Eddie Dixon’s 2017 work is in copyright, and United States law has no freedom-of-panorama exception for sculpture. Photographing it yourself creates no right to publish.
• The 2010 postage stamp design — USPS designs have been under copyright since 1978.
• Material from the Baylor Doris Miller Archive and other restricted collections — linked and cited, never copied. Baylor requires prior written consent for reproduction.
• Poetry and other literary works still in copyright — quoted only within fair use, and then linked.

Department of Defense imagery appears here under the standard condition that its use does not imply endorsement. That notice is carried in the footer of every page.

What this site will not do

Four commitments

It will not fill gaps with plausible detail. Where the documents fall silent — what time Miller reached the bridge, how long he fired, what he said — this site says they fall silent. Every vivid detail in the popular account lives in one of those gaps.

It will not diminish him in the course of correcting the record. What is documented is remarkable enough: a man barred by rating from any combat station went to the bridge of a torpedoed, burning battleship, helped carry his dying captain out of the flames, and worked an anti-aircraft gun until the ammunition ran out.

It will not carry advertising or affiliate links on pages reproducing federal imagery. Department of Defense visual information may not be used to imply endorsement of a business or product.

It will not present itself as official. This is an independent reference site. It has no connection to the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, the Miller family or any memorial organisation.