THREE HEROES Cont. on

THREE HEROES Continued from Page 3

such a vulgar, obscene bloodbath!

Nothing prepared him for this. Nothing could. After all, he was only a galley busboy who just became a cook, a totally untrained machine-gunner from the Lone Star state who was content to just work on his daddy’s farm till age 20.

As if lost in a dream, he now felt the ungodly vibration of explosions surround him.

But, one thing was clear: until all hands were ordered from the burning ship, Miller – who only previously cleaned off food tables as a galley cook and served as laundry attendant – was now attempting to help the Pearl Harbor fleet shoot down twenty-nine Japanese planes – accounting for (possibly) 4 strikes of his own, before his ammunition ran out.

Meanwhile, onboard another ship, not far from Dorie Miller’s USS West Virginia -- the USS Arizona battleship was taking on even more devastating hits of her own. Far more punishing than the USS West Virginia where Dorie Miller struggled on. The deadly drone-sound of over 350 Japanese fighter planes and bombers overhead were raining down a constant firestorm of death. The two-hour bloodletting would not let up till some 20 U. S. ships and over 200 American aircraft were damaged or destroyed, inflicting 3,500 casualties.

Pilots scrambled to become airborne against a superior number of 353 Imperial Japanese enemy aircraft (which included fighters, level and dive bombers, and torpedo bombers).

In the lethal face of such overwhelming odds, American airmenheroics, simply went off the chart.

U. S. Army Air Corps pilots, George Welch and Kenneth M. Taylor, scrambled out of their bunks to become the first two American pilots to get airborne on their P-40 fighters and engage the enemy, together having a combined ‘kill’ shot of at least 6 Japanese fighters and bombers.

Another Army Air Corps pilot, Second Lieutenant Philip M. Rasmussen, from the 46th Pursuit Squadron at Wheeler Field, at Oahu, was so desperate and determined to get airborne that he strapped his .45 caliber pistol to his waist and ran to his plane still wearing his pajamas! Lt. Rasmussen found an undamaged Curtiss P-36 Hawk fighter, taxied it to a revetment area where it was quickly loaded with ammunition, then took to the skies.

The meager number of U. S. airmen engaged 11 enemy Japanese aircraft in vicious aerial dogfighting giving no thought to their own overmatched odds. With his .50 caliber aircraft gun, Lt. Rasmussen, still clad in purple pajamas, engaged a superior, deadly Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero – miraculously outmaneuvering it – and shot it down!

Rasmussen then crippled another enemy plane before two Japanese Zeros raked his P-36 with machine gun and cannon fire, leaving Rasmussen’s fighter riddled with over 500 bullet holes! Flying on just a wing-and-a-prayer, the young 23-year-old Second Lieutenant had his aircraft’s canopy blown off and he briefly lost control of his aircraft! Despite losing his brakes, rudders and tail wheel, the deadly American pilot made a miracle landing!

Meanwhile, back onboard the USS Arizona, the American battleship was not faring well, taking on consecutive heavy airborne hits. The battleship finally exploded violently and began sinking. A 42-year-old Lieutenant Commander, Samuel Fuqua, was onboard the USS Arizona as it was brutally bombed bow-to-stern in a most unforgiving, ungodly manner. So punishing was the bombardment upon the USS Arizona that Lt. Commander Fuqua was knocked completely unconscious by a ferocious bomb blast! Lying motionless on the hot-andcold, mangled, iron-and-steel that twisted the battleship grotesquely into an unrecognized, obscene shape, Fuqua’s form remained completely unconscious. Then slowly, his eyelids parted to allow tiny filaments of sunlight to enter into his confused, dazed head. The bombblast and concussion landed only a few feet away and, by all odds, he should have been dead, outright. As the Missouri-born, Fuqua, dazed and shaken, erratically tried to stand upright – another massive bomb tore into the ship’s structure, ripping away unbelievable chunks of massive debris. Sadly, it was this latest explosion that killed more than 1,000 men instantly, including the ship’s 53-year-old Captain Franklin Van Valkenburgh. In one flash of a micro-second, Capt. Van Valkenburgh’s death simultaneously made Lt. Commander Samuel G. Fuqua, reluctantly, the senior officer – the new captain of the USS Arizona. Greatness would be thrust upon him.

It is exceedingly difficult today to fully comprehend the almost unimaginable force of these horrendous bomb blasts and their subsequent concussions. Imagine this, the sheer force of one bomb aboard the USS Arizona was so ferocious in its impact, that it physically blew 100 crewmen off the USS Vestal repair ship which was anchored close to the Arizona, on Battleship Row! The 100 humans were blasted high into the air off the USS Vestal and into the water. Again, the bomb blast occurred not on the USS Vestal, but on the USS Arizona next to her!

The last bomb exploded in the vicinity of Turret II. About 7 seconds after it hit, the forward magazines detonated in what has been called “a cataclysmic explosion,” causing the forward turrets and conning tower to completely collapse some 30-feet downward, effectively tearing the ship in half!

Despite his own injuries, the new Capt. Samuel Fuqua began directing firefighting operations over dead bodies that had fallen all around him. Relentlessly, Fuqua first thought of his men, the burned and now crippled survivors who looked his way for guidance and orders for safety. The gallant, newly-installed Captain ignored constant overhead gunfire from passing Japanese aircraft and calmly led orderly evacuation procedures to abandon his sinking ship.

With burning tears in his eyes, USS Arizona crewman, Edward Wentzlaff, would later recall a lifelong vision of his gallant, Captain Samuel Fuqua saving his shipmates’ lives that horrific Pearl Harbor day: “I can still see him standing there, ankle deep in water, stub of a cigar in his mouth, cool and efficient, oblivious to the danger all about him.”

Despite urgings to him, Fuqua ignored his own safety, and was among the last men to abandon his ship. He and two fellow officers finally commandeered a boat and navigated it to pick up survivors. Miraculously, through deadly, heavy firepower directed at them from the skies, they looked for survivors. They were sitting ducks, ignoring the death that steadily rained down about him, even streaking the oily waters which surrounded them with fire. Capt. Fuqua defied the odds and firmly continued giving direct-orders so that his boat continued to pick up survivors, one-by-one.

The wounded Captain Fuqua, who was just previously thrown into the air into complete unconsciousness onboard the USS Arizona, now refused to abandon his men as long as blood coursed through his veins. He left not one survivor in the water.

As for the USS Arizona, the valiant battleship was so viciously bombed that it was – unlike many of the other ships at Pearl Harbor – completely beyond repair. The sheer force of the massive bomb explosions allowed only the wreckage to lie at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, upon where the USS Arizona Memorial was dedicated on 30 May 1962, to all those men who died.

But what of the young, Black Texas-sized hero, aboard the USS West Virginia?

Well, the untrained and unlikely gallant gladiator, Doris “Dorie” Miller, the Mess Cook Attendant, who manned an anti-aircraft machine gun for the very first time to take aim at Japanese Zeros, would make his own history. He was decorated like no other Black serviceman before him.

However, for Doris Miller, there was one serious, negative issue to deal with. he willingly, and purposely, disobeyed the law that prohibited Black servicemen (back then) from firing any weapons. When Doris “Dorie” Miller received a letter signed by Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, Miller could no longer hold his head up high – he humbly lowered it and tears streaked his face. The letter cited Doris “Dorie” Miller, as one of the “first U. S. heroes of World War II.” Despite his rule-breaking, he was saluted as a genuine hero!

It was a most proud moment for the U. S. galley cook who could not choke back his tears.

Also, Miller was awarded the distinguished Navy Cross, recommended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself. And on May 27, 1942, U. S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, personally pinned it on Miller onboard the USS Enterprise (CV-6) aircraft carrier, in front of his peers. His citation read, in full, the following words:

“Distinguished devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and disregard of his personal safety during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. While at the side of his Captain on the bridge, Miller despite enemy strafing and bombing, and in the face of serious fire, assisted in moving his Captain, who had been mortally wounded, to a place of greater safety and later manned and operated a machine gun until ordered to leave the bridge.”

Sadly, in December of 1943, Doris “Dorie” Miller was killed when a Japanese torpedo sank his ship, the USS Liscome Bay in the South Pacific during the Battle of Makin. The USS Liscome Bay, a Casablanca-class escort carrier with 27 aircraft, was torpedoed in the stern causing the ship to sink in only 23 minutes. It carried 54 officers and 648 enlisted men to a watery grave. The highly-decorated Pearl Harbor hero, Ship’s Cook First Class Doris Miller, went down with her. Of the 916 crewmen, only 272 would be rescued.

But, Doris “Dorie” Miller’s legacy lives on, to this very day. In 1971, a barracks at the Great Lakes training camp was named in his honor. In 1972, a destroyer-escort warship, named the USS Miller, was commissioned in his memory. And in 1985, a memorial monument was erected at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Waco, Texas, the city where he first entered into this world.

And the USS Miller still sailed onward – like his spirit which lives onward in all the crewmen that boarded his namesake ship. The warship he begat through valor. His warship, the destroyer-escort USS Miller (DE-1091), that sailed the very seas that he now rests in.