ABSTRACT
The December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, which triggeredAmerican involvement in the actual fighting, was noteworthy in terms of race as well. The Roosevelt Administration, determined to forge the maximum degree of national unity to pursue the global war, initiated a string of ethnic and racial war heroes in the early days of the war, including an Irishman, a Jew, and a Negro. The latter was 22-year-old Dorie Miller of Waco, Texas. Relegated to a noncombatant post as a steward or officer’s mess servant, Miller had never been instructed on the firing of guns. Nevertheless, during the Pearl Harbor attack aboard the ill-fated USS Arizona, Miller dragged his mortally wounded captain to safety, and then manned a machine gun and, according to U.S. Navy information personnel, he shot down five Japanese planes. (He died two years later when the aircraft carrier to which he had been assigned was sunk by a Japanese submarine.) Miller’s feats ascended to a level of legend and were retold often, especially in publications read by American Negroes, the majority of whom experienced an understandable pang of pride in his heroism.
