James E. Nierle
Doris Miller
President, Navy Department Board of Decorations and Medals
Department of the Navy
720 Kennon Street SE STE 309
Washington Navy Yard, D.C. 20374-5023
On May 4, I received your letter dated March 27 in which you state you are responding on behalf of Secretary of the Navy Mabus. In that letter you state very clearly that the Navy will not recommend and upgrade from the Navy Cross to the Medal of Honor for Doris Miller.
Your letter further stated “The Navy can only recommend an upgrade, and then only if new and relevant material evidence was discovered that was not available at the time of the original decision. The Navy is not aware of any such evidence.”
That statement Mr. Nierle is patently false.
At the time of Doris Miller’s actions the Navy was totally segregated. How could the Navy not recognize that racism was the underlying theme? Or is it not new evidence? Based on the language in your letter, it is clear that The U.S. Navy, The Navy Department Board of Decorations and Medals, and you, as the currier of the Navy’s response to the thousands of requests for the Medal of Honor for Doris Miller, do not understand or fully recognize the depth and breadth of racism and discrimination. Or is it so well established that you are blind to it?
Quoting from your letter “This case has received more attention than any award in the Navy’s history. Beginning in 1942, and continuing to the present, countless requests have been made to award Doris Miller the Medal of Honor. As explained in the enclosed response to your (Marsha Joyner) 1997 request via Medal of Honor awardee, Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D. Hawaii), thorough official reviews of the case have consistently found no evidence that would meet the high standard for requesting upgrade to the Medal of Honor. If new evidence is presented in the future, the Navy will of course accord it all the attention it deserves.”
As you suggested I reread the 1997 letter that I sent via the late Senator Daniel Inouye, who was also denied a Medal of Honor because he was Asian. June 21, 2000, Inouye was presented the Medal of Honor by President Bill Clinton for his service during World War II, 55 years after he was severely injured.
In the biography of the world famous Admiral Hyman Rickover, “Rickover, Controversy and Genius, the authors Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen write, “Jewish midshipmen were ‘sent to Coventry’ for all of their four years at the Naval Academy. No midshipmen could speak to him; no one could acknowledge his existence.”
So, being “sent to Coventry,” for a soldier, meant isolation. By extension, the term came to mean being ostracized by one’s peers.
The sending of a midshipman to Coventry was unofficially tolerated at Annapolis, although the practice was not officially acknowledged in any way.
“In 1988, the Department of Defense tasked the Army and Navy with conducting reviews to determine if racial discrimination existed in the award policies during World War II and if the Navy Cross or Distinguished Service Cross recipient was denied the Medal of Honor due to racial discrimination.”
The Navy and Army studies acknowledged a society marked by racial discrimination during
World War II. Yet, the Navy refused to examine the underlying racism in granting Medals as the Army did.
Based on all of the papers and articles that I have read, it is clear that President Franklin D. Roosevelt apparently considered giving the Medal of Honor to Miller, but the top Naval officials voiced their opposition.
In an April 9, 1942 letter to the chairman of the Committee on Naval Affairs (House of Representatives), Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, a confirmed racist, an ardent defender of the Navy’s racial exclusion policy, lobbied against giving Miller the Congressional Medal of Honor.
During World War II, the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox reported directly to the President.
Secretary Knox’s written policy toward Blacks, Filipinos, Chinese, Chamorros and other minorities was “The policy of not enlisting men of the colored races for any branch of the naval service but the messmen branch was adopted to meet the best interests of general ship efficiency.”
Carlos Bulosan wrote, “I feel like a criminal running away from a crime I did not commit. And this crime is that I am a Filipino in America.”
In addition to working for the notoriously anti-Japanese Hearst newspaper chain, Secretary Knox had publicly advocated in 1933 for the internment of all Japanese in Hawai’i “before the beginning of hostilities threatens.”
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Knox requested he be allowed to go to Hawai’i to investigate personally. After spending 36 hours in Hawai’i, he stated at a Los Angeles press conference, “I think the most effective Fifth Column work of the entire war was done in Hawaii with the exception of Norway.” This was a lie!
In his Dec. 14 report to the President, he repeated his Fifth Column accusations and charged local Japanese with deliberately misleading defenders at Pearl Harbor. He continued to repeat these charges even after the FBI and Army Intelligence agreed that there had been no sabotage during or after the attack.
Unlike his White shipmates whose acts of bravery were acknowledged by being sent back to the states, Doris was fished out of the burning waters as the West Virginia went down and was transferred to the Indianapolis and spent the next 17 months at Pearl Harbor waiting on (White) Junior Officers. Finally in June of 1942 the Pittsburgh Courier called for Miller to be allowed to return to the states like White heroes. December, 1942 Doris Miller arrived in Waco, a hero.
Can the Navy really stand by its statement that they have examined the entire racist attitudes and actions underlining the awarding of the Medal to Doris Miller?
Secretary of The Navy Frank Knox had issued a denial of the Medal of Honor even though Senator James H. Mead, [Senate Reso S.2392} Rep. John D. Dingell (D.Mi.){H.R.6800} and superior officers had recommended that he be given the Medal of Honor in response to the public outcry.
The Secretary of the Navy (Knox) has already addressed a letter of commendation to the above man in recognition of the manner in which he performed his duty during the attack on Pearl Harbor. In view of the recommendations of the Pacific Fleet Board of Awards and the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, the recognition already awarded is deemed sufficient and appropriate.”
Mr. Nierle, you wrote in statement of Mr. James E. Nierle, President, Navy Department Board of Decorations and Medals, Before the House committee on oversight and government reform
On Military service records and awards 29 FEBRUARY 2012:
“Although the basic process for award recommendation and approval has not changed significantly since WWII . . . From World War II through the post-Vietnam era, award recommendations were processed and recorded as hard copy paper documents.
“Although the Navy continues to use a standard paper format for award recommendations and approvals, metadata pertaining to Navy awards is maintained in a web-based, searchable database that contains data for awards as far back as 1963. Our awards branch staffs also have ready access to various other awards records covering WWII and later, but none of these collections is exhaustive.”
That statement gives credence to the underlying issue of racism. Every communication I have received from your office reads the same regardless of the signature at the bottom of the page. In not one of the letters and statements to me or other Congress members is the mention of racism. One would think by now you Mr. Nierle and the Navy Department would come to see that racism is real.
In 1984 Dr. Leroy Ramsey, a retired Hofstra University history professor, became angered because so few Blacks were included in televised celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of D-Day in Europe. Black and a World War II veteran himself, Ramsey decided to write a book on the Black military experience during the war. When he discovered that no Black had received the Medal of Honor in World Wars I and II, he abandoned the book and began a quest to redress what he believes is a gross oversight – getting the Medal of Honor awarded to one or more Black veterans of the two world wars.
After reading each of the 3,417 Medal of Honor citations, Ramsey checked the records of Black servicemen who had been awarded other high military honors. And that’s how he discovered Doris Miller.
“I just don’t think that this can be a situation where no Blacks performed with valor to the point that they didn’t get the Medal of Honor,” says Ramsey. “I saw a hell of a lot of Congressional Medals of Honor (awarded) for a whole lot less than … Dorie Miller did.”
Since then, Ramsey has become the seaman’s unofficial biographer. It was he who revived interest in a Medal of Honor for Doris Miller by hounding members of Congress in person and through the mail from his Albany, N.Y., home. In October 1987, the late Rep. Mickey Leland, Texas 18th District and chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, co-sponsored a bill to waive the medal’s statute of limitations for Doris Miller. The bill stalled in committee, but in 1988 the Department of Defense began researching the sailor’s actions at Pearl Harbor.
”Because Miller was Black, this is what makes his heroism so outstanding,” Ramsey says. ”The first thing that the Congressional Medal of Honor asks is (that) you have to go beyond the call of duty. That phrase cannot be lost when it comes to Dorie Miller.
”Here was a man who did what he was not allowed to do. Just manning that machine gun was going beyond the call of duty right there.”
Inasmuch as your letter states “The President Franklin Roosevelt was empowered to award the Medal of Honor had he felt it was justified.” And that the Navy can only recommend an upgrade. Since the U.S. Navy refuses to acknowledge the racism in awarding the Medal of Honor, we find it necessary to go directly to the President of the United States.
Sincerely
MarshaRose Joyner
President Emeritus, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition-Hawai’i
808-741-4612
