 Well, here we are navigating the journey on a given Wednesday with Marsha Joyner. I'm Jay Fidel to 12 o'clock block. And we're going to talk about the story of Dory, Dory Miller, a grateful nation, question mark. Yeah. He was a fantastic hero. Not enough has been made of that. You've studied it for years and written about it. You have done all you could do, but there's more that you could do to bring it to the public eye. So who is Dory Miller? Dory Miller is, let's see if we can show this picture. This is Dory Miller, and he was originally Doris, but of course. D-O-R-I-S. Yes. He was a great big strapping guy, Doris. Doris. Yeah. That was when he was born to midwife, gave him that name. And he was born on a farm because his family were farmers in Waco, Texas. So of course you had midwives and whatnot. He would have been born in the 20s. In the Depression, yeah. And so this story about Dory, and I say, let me, I have a story to tell you. Yeah, there he is. One pulled out of an old trunk, from the corners of my memory, from the hidden annals of Americana, from the dirt swept under the rug, from the back roads of history. And this is one of those stories. So he's a hero. He's a hero. He's a big strapping black guy from Waco, Texas. He's in the United States Navy at the time of Pearl Harbor, and that distinguishes and defines him what happened on December 7th. So he chose to join the Navy even though he knew it was segregated. But he says, and I quote, it beats sitting on a curb in Waco, Texas. So he joins the Navy. He's stationed on the West Virginia. And in March. That's Pearl Harbor. And March. Was it the battleship? The battleship. One of the battleships. He was moved, the battleship was moved from California to Hawaii. And this is getting ready for war. Now we'll jump around, but the Americans spent one billion with a bee in the 1930s getting Honolulu ready for war with Japan. That's a lot of bread in the 1930s. It was. Honolulu did not experience the depression like everybody else did because Uncle Sam was busy building, they put in the tunnels, they put in the Red Hill, all that stuff that we're complaining about today, getting ready for war with Japan. So you know, we've been raised with the notion that Pearl Harbor was a sneak attack. But now you're talking about getting ready for war. So maybe it wasn't so much a sneak attack. And I saw that you brought some headlines with you. I did. There were days before Pearl Harbor where the local newspapers here in Hawaii had headlines reporting that war was imminent and attack was imminent. That's not a sneak attack. This was the week before. This was the week before. And that is. Read the headline. This one, Kurisu bluntly warned nation ready for battle. And this is the Honolulu advertiser. The week before, it was the week before November 30, 1941. Okay. Hold it up so we can take a look at it. Can you get that one? Yeah. Not a very good print. But that's, no, it's not. But you can see that's what it is. It's an advertiser headline. Okay. You got another one now. Yes. And this is the Hilo Tribune Herald. Japan may strike over weekend. And this again is November 30, 1941. So the notion that it was a surprise attack really fades in view of these local headlines. They had no great inside information. And somehow they had enough information where two newspapers, a few days before, a week before, could, you know, prognosticate, could tell us that it was going to be an attack. Well, now think about this. To move all of those ships from Japan across that ocean because they bombed Pearl Harbor, Guam, and another place all at the same time on the same day, even though because of the time zones it looks different, but they all happened at the same time. Can you imagine moving all those ships and all of those planes and all of those people and to buy enough provisions for all of those ships and nobody knows? And you're crossing that huge Pacific Ocean and nobody knows. Come on. Nobody knew. I mean, you know, if they did that right here, wouldn't you say, why are they filling up those ships? Why are they buying all of that? You know, somebody, you know, and there were spies in those days. I think there were political forces at play. They were spies. Strange diplomacy and espionage going on. Oh, yes. Yeah. But let me tell you, at the time, the Navy was segregated. In fact, it had been segregated since the Revolutionary War up until 1948 when Truman integrated the military. But if you think of all those wars and so the blacks at one time they were all Asian as messmen, which as a messman is a rate given only to those men who take care of the senior officers. They served the table in the officer's mess. They served. That's a mess. Maybe they cooked too, I don't know. They did everything. They made sure his uniform was perfect. Oh. They made sure everything that when they weren't at sea, if his wife needed a Christmas present, they, you know, everything, they took care of the officers. That was the whole idea. So a bit of a royalty thing. Yes. And it was a class thing. Yeah. It was a race thing. Well, yeah. I mean, but for the officers to be treated this way and not the rest of the crew. Our stochracy. Yes. Not the rest of the crew. So. Something out of the south. Yes. As a matter of fact, when the Navy did choose blacks to come in, they did choose, they said it clearly that they wanted the blacks from the south because they weren't uppity like northern blacks. Northern blacks talk back. The southern blacks were not uppity. So yes, it was exactly as you're saying. Hmm. Yeah. So Dory Miller was a messman. Yes. And he was on the West Virginia in the West battleship. He was there at Pearl Harbor. What happened? So the morning of the bombing in the early morning, December 7 was on a Sunday about seven o'clock or eight and there had been a huge officers party the night before. So everything was late. The bugler was late, breakfast was late, everything was late, which is why they were all kind of huddled up and nobody was ready. And so then begins the planes come in and KGU radio is playing Glenn Miller and sunrise there and they, you know, the whole beautiful Sunday morning, gorgeous Sunday morning. And all of a sudden here this planes come and they come across the Coley-Coley Pass and they'd already been up at Dillingham Field and all of these places. But now they come into view. And there are a hundred ships that are sitting ducks in Pearl Harbor. And all sitting ducks. A hundred and fifty ships. A hundred and fifty ships. They're there, you know, and they began to pick them off. Well, during Miller, they call him up because his captain of the ship had been mortally wounded and they call him up because he's the biggest man on the ship to move him. And the captain says, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to be moved. I'm going down with the ship. The ship was. Oh, yeah. There was no question that this was attack coming from everywhere. And I think we do have a picture of the West Virginia as it is blowing up. And there it is, as you can see. When you realize how many people were killed that day, it just takes on a whole secondary meaning. And you see where the boat is in the water there? They're trying to pick people out. All of that was oil and it was burning like you wouldn't feel all over the ocean. Ships going down the Arizona. Violence everywhere. Everywhere. Murderous, lethal violence. So during Miller, when they said no, don't move him, he sees a gun torrent that's empty and he steps up to it and begins to shoot and he shoots and he shoots and he shoots. Now he had no training. No training. They didn't shoot. They didn't train these messmen to do this. That was not their job. They weren't to do this. They weren't even to touch the guns. But he did. And years later when they go through all of this about what happened, his brother said, oh, this guy could shoot the eyes out of a squirrel. There was no training. You know, he was a kid and he learned how to shoot. Here's, we're in trouble. He steps up and begins to shoot and he says, and I quote, that they tell me, he didn't say he shot down five, he says they tell me I shot down five planes. So the heart of the story, of course, is that he was not recognized. The papers said an unidentified colored messman shot down the planes, an unidentified colored messman. And so he's heard, he's into the ocean, you know, like everybody else in that boiling water. Well, there's a certain amount of risk to just being behind the machine gun. Because I don't know if people realize that during World War II, with the equipment the weapons they had, the planes, the guns they had, things were much closer. It was not an automated war. You could see the eyes of the person you were shooting at. And as those planes were coming down, toward him, they would see him shooting. And they would try to shoot him. They would try to blow him up. So this was very risky business, which makes it all the more heroic. And that's why, I mean, I'm dwelling on this because I think we have to take a break and think about this. We're going to take a short break. OK. We're going to come back. And you're going to try to explain to me why it took years for him to be recognized. You're going to have a hard time with that. OK. We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha. I want to invite all of you to talk story with John Wahee every other Monday here at Think Tech Hawaii. And we have special guests like Professor Colin Moore from the University of Hawaii who joins us from time to time to talk about the political happenings in this state. Please join us every other Monday, Aloha. OK. So this was really quite remarkable, Marcia, that first of all, you have a black guy who's usually relegated to being a messman. That was his rate. And all of a sudden, in the heat of this battle, he takes an active role with an important piece of weaponry. And he successfully shoots down these five planes and takes his own life and his hands by doing that. I mean, he could have jumped off earlier. He could have got off that ship, was the ship was under attack. Instead, he stuck around. And the papers caught it. And they talked about an unidentified colored sailor. Shot down these planes. Who did this? And that was December 7, 1941. So it's quite remarkable. The whole story is quite remarkable. Why did it take so long? It says not until March 1942. That's a year later. A year later that they identified eyewitnesses, even though the captain of his ship, all the people said he did it. But it wasn't until the Congress said in 1942 that they identified the unknown black messman was Dory Miller. And they really worked and worked and worked to get him recognized. What does that mean, a medal? What does that mean? Anything. He was alive, you know? Yes, he's alive. He was alive. So this is. So unlike the white men that were hurt that day, and there were hundreds of them, they got leave to go home to get well. He was not. He was sent on another ship to go back to work. And so the newspapers, the black newspapers, really. So beginning in the wake of the Dallas Express 11 April 1942, they tell the story of how an all Southern Negro youth conference met. And they wanted to meet him and how they invited him to see. He was a hero for them. He was a hero for him. And they presented him with a $100 war bond. Can you imagine 1942? That was a lot of money. That was a lot of money. Yeah. And how the children that were at that conference adored meeting a real hero. And he was such a warm, gentle soul. He was the only story like this, right? There was no other story of a black sailor stepping up, being a hero in a surprise battle. So that's quite remarkable. And you'd think that the Navy would have made more of it. No, even though they had eyewitnesses, they didn't. OK, what happened? So they had newspaper after newspaper, 1942, 43. All of these black newspapers are clamoring to have him recognize finally, finally, that we have a hero finally. And the newspapers, the clamoring, all of this finally gets to the Navy. And he is awarded the Navy Cross. Now, that was a hard one battle until you to get the Navy Cross because the, I mean, finally, what year was that? 1942, September 15, 1943. Admiral Chester Nimitz personally presented Dory the Navy Cross May 22, May 27, 1942, aboard the USS Enterprise. So he was transferred to the Enterprise? No, that's where the ceremony was. But the whole, his duty station was here in Honolulu the whole time. They transferred him to another ship. But here? No, 1943, early morning dawn in the vast Pacific Ocean, a periscope rocked the surface, locking in on the target. The enemy torpedoed, sunk the ship. And in 22 minutes, the Lipscomb Bay is where he was stationed with 54 officers and men, including Dory, went down. Ironically, Mr. and Mrs. Miller, his parents, were not notified until December 7, 1943. They didn't even bother to tell his parents. We think that was special for him, or that was wartime. It was a submarine. It was operating under some curtain of secrecy. In terms of communications, it was a long time. And so the newspapers did everything in the world. So on the front page of the Pittsburgh Courier, January 1942, United States, 41 Lintons, 1940, anyway, in the issue, Mann Gunn at Pearl Harbor, NAACP, asked the president of the United States to give the unnamed messman a Distinguished Service Award. And I'm just telling you how many newspapers, how many people clamored for this. Well, you've done a lot of research on this, Marsha. We have worked on this. Let me tell you, since somebody, I don't know how many years now, said to me, we had this portrait at Pearl Harbor. Who is this guy? Tell us about him. So my curiosity, so I went out, and here's this beautiful portrait of Dorian Miller. We have a picture of him, this one, yeah. That's the one at Pearl Harbor. So that's when I started doing the research. And why doesn't he have the Medal of Honor? We started writing to the Navy, following all of them. I interviewed everyone of the West Virginia people that were still alive. And we wrote. When was this, when were you writing? 1970, what is it? 70s. In the 70s, OK. Yeah. In the 80s, we started this whole thing. We did. Now, the newspapers had been doing it all along. Across the country, books, written articles, everything written about him. I even asked Senator Inouye. He joined with me. And he wrote a letter to the Department of the Navy to give him a Medal of Honor. No, they turned it down. Said, well, we need eyewitnesses. And everybody's dead. Can't have a Medal of Honor without eyewitness. They made excuses to the senator, right? We kept writing and kept writing all across the country. People stayed with it until now. And we keep saying, they said, well, you know we've gotten more requests for him than anybody else in history. And the last letter I got from them, they said, if you could give us new information. What's new? There's nothing new. What's new? We're giving you. I've been really saying they wanted more information than it wasn't enough yet. But anyway, so did you ultimately prevail on this? No, we still haven't. You still haven't. No. Even with Dan Inouye's help. Even with Dan Inouye's help, even up to Obama, they would not, the Department of the Navy would not give. Did they say why? No, they just said no. What's the standard for a Medal of Honor? Oh, well, right now they say you have to have eyewitnesses. Well. What sort of conduct, though, entitles somebody to a Medal of Honor? When you do something, you sacrifice yourself for the other troops. The latest one, he took, it was an incredible process that he went through to save his troops, you know. And died in the process. No, he lived. You don't have to die to get a Medal of Honor. No. Even Mueller did not get an award. He got a bronze star. He saved, when he was a lieutenant in Vietnam, he saved all of his troops. His troops are writing about it. But no, he didn't get anything either. So. Well, it's very rare. It is. It is. But then we have given up. That was my next question. In Waco, there's a beautiful sculpture. And here in Honolulu, there's a Navy housing named for Dory Miller. All across the country, there are all kinds of tributes. And people just love the story. If you watch the movie Pearl Harbor, Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the part of Dory Miller. Needless to say, when they were filming, I objected. I was at Pearl Harbor during the whole filming. I objected because Cuba Gooding, Jr., while he's a great star, he's not big. The whole story of Dory Miller, the reason he was called up on deck. He was the one to save his captain. He was the one, because he was the biggest man on the ship. So visually, it tells your story. Yeah. But they didn't listen to me, obviously. Is this unique, this story? I mean, did other situations like this happen in World War II where Black servicemen performed acts of great bravery worthy of medals and they didn't get medals? I mean, where can I read up on this? Where can I find them? What organizations follow this? What organizations are advocating for their families and their memories? There are so many. Even in Guam, they didn't. He says, in Guam, about the Chamorros and the Filipinos, he says he felt like in America that he was a criminal, but something he didn't do just because of the racism, the way they were treated. There is another one. And da, da, da, da, da, da. Let me find his name. No need, no need, Marsha. But he was. I want to just know that there were others. There were others. And his name, William Jeremiah Powell, was on the Curtis. And he, again, a messman, and he sits on the back of the Curtis and shoots down the plane and the plane crashes. But he's, and again, it was the white men on the ship that told the story of what he did. And I went digging for him, of course. But there are so many of these stories that go untold, so many. So what's the point? What's the point of your research? What's the point? What is your feeling now? What would you like to leave with the audience about all of this? We still haven't given up, of course. There are so many men of every color who go unrecognized for what they do, for what they did. Since 1774 until today, America has only been at war, has been at war every year, except 14 years. Not 14, but at a year here, a year here, it adds up to 14 years. When you think of all of the lives, all of the people that have sacrificed for this country, and how many of them go unrecognized, how many of them, how many, if you ask now to ask your audience, because Hawaii had, you know, Hawaiians and Filipinos and Chamaros, how many of them went unrecognized? I would bet you that we would get a huge number of them because they were all drafted, and they went all in this war, World War II, because of the draft. And even Vietnam, I mean Korea, because of the draft. How many of them go unrecognized? Well, I think it goes wider than that in the sense that in this country, people don't necessarily appreciate what the fighting men, people in the military, do for us. And I think that's especially so. Well, clearly it was especially so in Vietnam. Oh, yes. And I think it's so now, especially with the volunteer army. And so what you have is a lack of interest, really, on recognizing in the civilian community. And we need to work on that. We need to appreciate them more. I think because now my great-great-grandfather was Civil War General John Bill Hood. If you can imagine that. And he was on the other side. He was Confederate general. Confederate general, the one the base is named after? Well, that's. You have a statue of him in the house? No. But my maiden name is Hood. No, we don't talk about him. But when you come from a family that has years and years and all of those years of draft, you feel you. It's part of who you are. Now that we don't have a draft, people don't participate. They don't care about the war. Once we were through with the draft, it was only when it's your family that you care. Yeah, well, we've got to get over that. I never thought that terminating the draft was a good idea, anyway. Because I think that people should do national service. That's the best way. It's a clear way. And we have to have a connection between the citizen and the government. And it's really too bad that these days we don't have much of a connection between the citizen and the government. You pay taxes. You avoid doing federal crimes. And that's about it. We should all feel part of the government. They are us. We are them. And that's what I think this goes, including Dory Miller. We are him. He is us. He's part of the greatest generation that won that war. Now, there's one little thing. And I put it, the Jews and the Catholics didn't do much better than the blacks. In the biography of Admiral Hyman Rickover, he says, Jewish midshipmen were sent to Coventry. This is at the Naval Academy. Were sent to Coventry. For all the four years at the Naval Academy, no midshipman could speak to Rickover. No one acknowledged his existence. The idea of Coventry seems to have begun around the time of the Civil War between Charles I and Parliament. Royalist prisoners were sent to Coventry for their support of the Parliament. Another theory holds that townspeople of Coventry so disliked having troops quartered that they were ostracized. That's too bad. Coventry is a bad place to go. It's an ostracization. And if it's based on race or religion, it's really. On the Jews. If it's based on race or religion, it's very offensive. Yes. We're out of time, Marsha. Really appreciate this discussion with you. I think you want to carry it on. You know so much. You've read so much. You've written so much. This is not something that you should let slide under the waves. No, we don't. But because it was December 7, we had to share it. Perfectly appropriate. Thank you. Thank you, Marsha. Always. Marsha, join her. And we'll see you next time.