He was named Doris, as the
midwife who assisted his mother was convinced before his birth that the baby
would be a girl.
He was the third of four
sons and helped around the house, cooked meals and did laundry, as well as
worked on the family farm. He was a fullback on the football team at Waco's Alexander James
Moore High School.[14] He began attending the eighth grade on January 25,
1937, at age 17; he repeated the grade the following year because of poor
performance, so he decided to drop out of school.[15] He filled his time squirrel hunting with a .22 rifle
and completed a correspondence course in taxidermy. He applied to join
the Civilian
Conservation Corps but was
not accepted. At that time, he was 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall
and weighed more than 200 pounds (91 kg).[15] Miller worked on his father's farm until shortly before
his 20th birthday.
Miller's nickname
"Dorie" may have originated from a typographical error. He was
nominated for recognition for his actions on December 7, 1941, and the Pittsburgh
Courier released a
story on March 14, 1942, which gave his name as "Dorie Miller".[16] Since then, some writers have suggested that it was a
"nickname to shipmates and friends".[15]
Miller enlisted in the U.S.
Navy as a mess attendant third class at the Naval Recruiting Station in Dallas,
Texas, for six years on September 16, 1939.[2] Mess attendant was one of the few ratings open at the
time to black sailors.[17] He was transferred to the Naval Training
Center, Naval Operating Base, Norfolk, Virginia, arriving on September 19.[2] After training school, he was assigned to the
ammunition ship Pyro (AE-1)
and then transferred on January 2, 1940, to the Colorado-class battleship West
Virginia (BB-48).
It was on West Virginia where he started competition boxing,
becoming the ship's heavyweight champion. In July, he was on temporary duty
aboard Nevada (BB-36) at Secondary Battery Gunnery
School. He returned to West Virginia on August 3. He advanced
in rating to mess attendant second class on February 16, 1941.[3][17]
Miller woke up at 6 a.m. on December 7, 1941, aboard West
Virginia. He served breakfast mess and was collecting laundry at
7:57 a.m. when planes from the Japanese aircraft
carrier Akagi fired the first of seven
torpedoes that hit West Virginia.[15] The
"battle
stations" alarm went off; Miller headed for his battle station,
an anti-aircraft battery magazine amidships, only to discover
that a torpedo had destroyed it.
He then went to "Times Square" on deck, a central spot
aboard the ship where the fore-to-aft and port-to-starboard passageways
crossed, reporting himself available for other duty and was assigned to help
carry wounded sailors to places of greater safety.[15] Lieutenant
Commander Doir C. Johnson, the ship's communications officer, spotted Miller
and saw his physical prowess, so he ordered him to accompany him to the conning
tower on the flag bridge to assist in moving the ship's captain, Mervyn
Bennion, who had a gaping wound in his abdomen where he had apparently
been hit by shrapnel after the first Japanese attack.[18] Miller
and another sailor lifted the skipper but were unable to remove him from the
bridge, so they carried him on a cot from his exposed position on the damaged
bridge to a sheltered spot on the deck behind the conning tower where he
remained during the second Japanese attack.[18][19] Captain
Bennion refused to leave his post, questioned his officers and men about the
condition of the ship, and gave orders and instructions to crew members to
defend the ship and fight.[18] Unable
to go to the deck below because of smoke and flames, he was carried up a ladder
to the navigation
bridge, where he died from blood loss despite the aid from a pharmacist
mate.[18] He
was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.[20]
