December 7, 1941

Before 0755

A Sunday morning, and a ship moored outboard

Almost everything written about Doris Miller describes the same half hour. Very little of it comes from the documents produced by the men who were there. This page uses those documents and nothing else, and says plainly where they stop.

USS West Virginia was a Colorado-class battleship, moored on the outboard side of a two-ship nest with USS Tennessee inboard of her, on the south-eastern face of Ford Island. Doris Miller, Mess Attendant Second Class, was twenty-two, in his third year of service, and had been collecting laundry when the first alarm sounded — a detail that comes from the Navy’s later accounts of the action, not from the action report, which does not describe his movements at all until he reaches the bridge.

Four days after the attack the ship’s senior surviving officer, Lieutenant Commander R. H. Hillenkoetter, submitted a five-paragraph report to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, with eight officers’ statements attached as enclosures (A) through (H). Together they run to a few thousand words. They are the closest thing that exists to a contemporaneous record of what happened aboard that ship, and they were written before anybody had a legend to protect.

0755 – 0800

Away fire and rescue party

Four officers, writing separately, put the first alarm within sixty seconds of each other. Hillenkoetter was in his cabin dressing when the word was passed for the fire and rescue party; about thirty seconds later came general quarters, and the marine orderly rushed in to say the Japanese were attacking. Two heavy shocks were felt on the hull, seeming to come from somewhere forward on the port side. They were torpedoes.

Lieutenant Commander Beattie, the navigator, was finishing breakfast in the wardroom. Lieutenant Ricketts, the senior gunnery officer aboard, was at the same table. Lieutenant (junior grade) F. H. White heard the bugle from the wardroom and ran to the quarterdeck, where he saw a Japanese plane over a ship ahead of the West Virginia, a column of water and smoke rising.

The ship took three or four torpedo hits in the opening minutes. Oil and water went over the decks. Lieutenant Commander Harper, the damage control officer, reached Central Station and found the pendulum inclinometer off its scale; he estimated a maximum list to port of twenty-eight degrees. On the bridge, Ricketts asked the captain for permission to go below and counterflood. He got it, and did.

The captain

“He then sank to the deck, and I loosened his collar”

Beattie was standing beside Bennion when he was hit. The captain doubled up with a groan, said he had been wounded, and went down. Lieutenant (jg) White, who saw the wound later, recorded it in the flat language of a damage report: the abdomen cut, about three inches by four, part of the intestines protruding. Bennion stayed conscious and stayed in command, asking about the fires and about the oil on the water, and refusing to be moved below.

Lieutenant Commander Johnson, the communication officer, went up to the signal bridge and found the captain lying on a cot. He had brought someone with him for a specific reason.

Ricketts listed who was on the bridge with him: Lieutenant (jg) F. H. White, Ensign V. Delano, Chief Signalman Siewart, Chief Pharmacist’s Mate Leak, “and Miller, D., Matt,2c.,” plus two or three signalmen. That single line, buried in a list of names, is the first appearance of Doris Miller in the documentary record of the attack.

What followed is described most fully in White’s statement. An improvised stretcher was built from a ladder. The captain’s stretcher slid aft with his head downward and the lashing came loose. White went to find something to cut it with; Ricketts came forward to look, followed by Miller and White.

After

Abandon ship, and a fire that burned until Monday

Burning oil from Arizona swept down the port side. Harper went below to the main deck and passed the word for all hands to abandon ship over the port bow. Men went into the water, onto Tennessee, and onto boats working alongside. Hillenkoetter himself dived overboard and swam to Tennessee, then organised a working party and went back aboard his own ship to fight the fire. Beattie put the length of the attack at about thirty minutes. The fires were not finally extinguished until Monday afternoon.

Hillenkoetter’s second paragraph names nine men for outstanding performance of duty: five lieutenant commanders and lieutenants, an ensign, a boatswain, Lieutenant (jg) White — and, inside the sentence about White, Doris Miller. He is the only enlisted man in the list.

• c. 0755“Away fire and rescue party” passed; general quarters about thirty seconds later. Two heavy shocks felt forward on the port side.
• 0756 – 0805Three or four torpedo hits. List to port reaches an estimated 28°. Ricketts obtains the captain’s permission and begins counterflooding.
• Early in the attackCaptain 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 the West Virginia’s quarterdeck.
• Time not recordedMiller is on the bridge. He is one of four men who carry Bennion aft to the navigation bridge. No document times this.
• Time not recordedMiller and Lieutenant (jg) White man the two machine guns forward of the conning tower. No document gives a duration.
• Before the guns fall silentReady-box ammunition is expended; the ammunition train from below is flooded and cannot be reached.
• c. 0825Attack ends after roughly thirty minutes. Bennion is dead. The order to abandon ship over the port bow has been passed.
• 8 December 1941Fires aboard West Virginia finally extinguished Monday afternoon.

The limits

What these documents do not say

They do not say what time Miller reached the bridge. They do not say how long he fired, or in what direction, or whether he hit anything. They do not say who ordered him to the guns, or who ordered him away from them. They do not name the mess attendant Johnson brought up to the signal bridge. They do not describe his battle station, his movements before the bridge, or anything he said.

Almost every vivid detail in the popular version of this story lives in one of those gaps. Some of it may well be true. None of it is in the record filed on 11 December 1941, and this site will not present it as though it were.