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Sources and Further Reading

Everything this site is built from, in one place. Primary documents first, because that is the order in which they were used.

ApproachPrimary documents first AccessAll sources are online Last reviewed27 August 2026

Order of preference
A document written at the time beats a document written later. A document written later beats a book. A book beats a website.

Primary documents

Written at the time, or close to it

  1. USS West Virginia (BB-48), Action of December 7, 1941 — Report of, BB48/A16-3, 11 December 1941. Signed Lieutenant Commander R. H. Hillenkoetter, Senior Surviving Officer. Enclosures (A)–(H): statements of Lt. Comdr. J. S. Harper, Lt. Comdr. T. T. Beattie, Lt. Comdr. E. E. Berthold, Lt. Comdr. D. C. Johnson, Lieut. L. J. Knight Jr., Lieut. C. V. Ricketts, Lieut. (jg) H. B. Stark and Lieut. (jg) F. H. White. First endorsement, Commander Battleships, Battle Force, 13 December 1941, signed W. S. Anderson. The central document of this site.
  2. Secretary of the Navy (Frank Knox), Commendation to Miller, Doris, Mess Attendant First Class, U.S. Navy, 30 March 1942. National Archives, NAID 74876313, Record Group 24, National Archives at St. Louis.
  3. Navy Cross citation, Doris Miller, 27 May 1942. Quoted verbatim in H.R. 2335 (119th Congress) and in Public Law 113-256.
  4. U.S. Navy, War Damage Report No. 45, USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56).
  5. USS West Virginia, Report of Salvage. Naval History and Heritage Command online reading room.
  6. U.S. Navy, The Negro in the Navy, Administrative History No. 84, 1947 — the Navy’s own account of the Steward’s Branch and of Black enlistment policy.
  7. National Archives, Record Group 80, Correspondence Relating to Discrimination, 1941–1944, file unit “Dorie Miller” (NAID 26416709) — the Naval Academy campaign correspondence. Identified but not yet read by this site.

Statutes and legislation

Acts, laws and bills

  1. Act of 4 February 1919, ch. 14, 40 Stat. 1056 — creating the Navy Cross, third in order behind the Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Medal.
  2. Act of 7 August 1942, ch. 551, Public Law 77-702, 56 Stat. 743–745 — re-ordering the decorations.
  3. Executive Order 9981, 26 July 1948 — desegregation of the armed forces.
  4. Public Law 113-256, 18 December 2014 (H.R. 4199, 113th Congress) — naming the Doris Miller VA Medical Center.
  5. H.R. 5549, 116th Congress (Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, 7 January 2020); H.R. 1251, 118th Congress and H.R. 2335, 119th Congress (Rep. Kweisi Mfume, 28 February 2023 and 25 March 2025) — Medal of Honor bills, with GovInfo status records.
  6. H.R. 6990, 117th Congress and H.R. 1252, 118th Congress — Congressional Gold Medal bills.
  7. Texas House Resolution 1138, 75th Legislature, adopted 27 May 1997.

Official but not primary
Written by the Navy, decades later, from records this site has not seen. Reliable, and occasionally in conflict with itself.

Official reference

Navy and government publications

  1. Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (Naval History and Heritage Command): entries for West Virginia (BB-48), Indianapolis (CA-35), Liscome Bay (CVE-56) and Miller (DE/FF-1091). The Miller entry doubles as the Navy’s official biographical sketch of Doris Miller.
  2. National Museum of the U.S. Navy, USS Liscome Bay (ACV/CVE-56).
  3. Naval History and Heritage Command, photographic sections and the Pearl Harbor action report exhibit.
  4. U.S. Navy press release, “Navy Names Future Aircraft Carrier Doris Miller During MLK, Jr. Day Ceremony,” 20 January 2020.
  5. Department of Veterans Affairs, History Office, Doris Miller.
  6. National Park Service, Pearl Harbor National Memorial.
  7. U.S. Postal Service, Stamp Announcement 10-05 and Texas news release, 2010; Smithsonian National Postal Museum object record.
  8. Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Pearl Harbor Day recipients.
  9. U.S. Coast Guard, Book of Valor, 1945.

Used with attribution
Where the site relies on one of these alone, the page says so in the text.

Secondary

Scholarship, journalism and reference

  1. Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas, entry for Miller, Doris — which describes the aircraft claims as almost certainly apocryphal.
  2. U.S. Naval Institute, Naval History magazine, February 2016 — the source of several widely-repeated details, including the July 1940 gunnery school, which appear nowhere else.
  3. National Museum of the Pacific War, “The Unforeseen Legacy of Doris Miller.”
  4. Waco History (Baylor University) and the Baylor Lariat.
  5. Navy Times, “How Dorie Miller’s bravery helped fight bigotry in the Navy,” 2019.
  6. U.S. Naval Institute News, on CVN-81 construction and schedule.
  7. Historic Districts Council, Dorie Miller Cooperative Houses.
  8. T. Michael Parrish and Robert V. Cutrer, Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor and the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement — the scholarly treatment; consulted through references, not yet read directly by this site.

Archives

Collections — linked, never reproduced

  1. Doris Miller Archive, The Texas Collection, Baylor University. Correspondence, clippings, photographs and documents. Reproduction requires prior written consent.
  2. Baylor Institute for Oral History.
  3. The Portal to Texas History, University of North Texas.
  4. Pittsburgh Courier — access through library subscription databases; see the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh newspaper guide.
  5. National Archives catalogue, Record Groups 24 and 80.

What this site has not read

Stated plainly, because it affects how much weight to give what is here.

  1. Miller’s official military personnel file, Record Group 24, National Archives at St. Louis. This would settle the gunnery school, the boxing championship, his advancement dates and his exact service dates — most of what this site currently marks as unverified.
  2. NHHC scans of the original action report pages. Quotations here come from the HyperWar transcription, which has been read against the document’s structure but not against the original typescript.
  3. Record Group 80, file unit “Dorie Miller.”
  4. The 1942 Congressional Record, which would confirm or correct the 1942 Medal of Honor bill numbers and sponsors.
  5. The 22 December 1941 newspaper text itself, in a digitised archive.

This list is maintained deliberately. A reference site that does not say what it has not seen is asking to be trusted further than it deserves. Editorial policy  ·  Suggest a source

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How this site works

Every factual claim is traceable to a named source. Where sources disagree, both are given. Where a popular claim is unsupported, it is flagged rather than quietly dropped. Wikipedia is not used as a source.

Verification

Archives

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Photographs reproduced here are works of the United States Government or are released under CC0. Full identifiers and credit lines are on the Image Credits page.

The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense visual information does not imply or constitute endorsement.

dorismiller.org — an independent reference site. Not affiliated with the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, or any memorial committee.

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