A member of Doris Miller’s family said Friday that his relatives would be “very, very disappointed” if the Navy strips the World War II hero’s name from an aircraft carrier now under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding.
The Navy announced in early 2020 that CVN-81 — the fourth ship in the Ford class of nuclear-powered carriers — would be named for Miller. He was a mess attendant second class who pulled injured sailors to safety and manned an anti-aircraft gun during the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
It was the first aircraft carrier to be named for an enlisted sailor and the first named for an African-American, the Navy said at the time.
Henrietta Miller-Bledsoe, 74, one of Doris Miller’s surviving several nieces and nephews, said the family took part in the Navy’s 2020 ceremony at Pearl Harbor announcing that the warship would bear their uncle’s name.
The family also attended a ceremony at Newport News Shipbuilding in August 2021 in which the first steel was cut for the vessel.
During the event, Miller’s family members signed the first steel plate. They got pieces of steel as souvenirs and were given shipyard construction hard hats with “Doris Miller” emblazoned across them.
But according to an Aug. 20 report by CNN, the Navy in recent months has been discussing stripping Miller’s name from the carrier. The network cited three sources “familiar with internal discussions.”
Two of those sources said there “have been internal conversations” about naming the ship for President Donald Trump.
That would be a first: No U.S. aircraft carrier has ever been named for a sitting president
Reaction from a hero’s family
Miller-Bledsoe, of Arlington, Texas, said that apart from press reports, the family hasn’t heard from the Navy about a renaming.
“Nothing has come from the White House to say that this is going to happen,” she said Friday. “So it’s not official. But this is a really odd situation here if it comes into fruition.”
If the name is changed six years after the Doris Miller name was announced, she said the family would be crestfallen.
“We would be very, very disappointed if they made the change,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to the country, and it wouldn’t be fair to him.”
“It’s like giving a child a piece of candy that they’ve been asking for all day long — and then after giving it to them, after a couple of licks, then you say, ‘Oh, that was a mistake, you shouldn’t be eating the candy. I’m taking that from you.’ ”
More than that, Miller-Bledsoe said, stripping her uncle’s name from the carrier “would take us back to the era in 1941, when persons of color were the least able to receive any types of awards or anything.”
One of Miller-Bledsoe’s sisters pressed for decades to have Doris Miller awarded the Medal of Honor. After that sister died in 2015, the other siblings — sons and daughters of Doris Miller’s older brother — took up the quest.
“We did not go out seeking for the carrier (name),” she said. “But praise be to the glory of God, the Navy reached out to us.
“We thought the Navy was finally getting to the point where they can recognize that Doris Miller not only did that heroic thing, he also started integration,” Miller-Bledsoe said. That is, he helped the Navy view Black sailors as sailors “who could learn to man the guns,” and not just perform service jobs.
In its Aug. 20 report, CNN said officials are considering posthumously awarding Miller the Congressional Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award for combat valor — and naming a smaller warship for him.
But Miller-Bledsoe said that even if her uncle posthumously gets the Medal of Honor, that’s no reason to remove his name from the CVN-81.
An aircraft carrier name and a Medal of Honor, she said, “are two very different things” — and Miller is worthy of both. And a smaller warship is not equivalent to a carrier, she said.
Bravery under fire
Doris “Dorie” Miller is considered one of the very first American combat heroes of World War II. He was a 22-year-old enlisted sailor, a mess attendant aboard the battleship USS West Virginia when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor.
Miller had served breakfast and was collecting laundry when the ambush began. He helped carry wounded sailors — including the ship’s mortally wounded captain — to safer positions.
He also manned an anti-aircraft machine gun — which he had not previously trained on — to shoot at Japanese warplanes. Accounts credit Miller with shooting down at least one, but possibly more.
Then Miller got back to helping more sailors to safety. About five months later, in May 1942, he received the Navy Cross, becoming the first Black sailor to receive that honor.
Miller was killed in combat nearly two years later. He was stationed on the carrier USS Liscome Bay when it was sunk by a Japanese torpedo in the Pacific on Nov. 24, 1943.
Miller, then 24, was among more than 600 lost that day, the deadliest sinking of a carrier in U.S. history. His body was never recovered.
Decades later, a Navy frigate was named after Miller and served the fleet from 1973 to 1991. In 2001, Cuba Gooding Jr. played Miller in the film “Pearl Harbor.”
Selecting the Doris Miller name
In early 2020, Thomas B. Modly, who served as acting Navy secretary during the first Trump administration, selected Doris Miller as the name for CVN-81.
“There were very specific and thoughtful reasons why I decided to make that choice,” he said Friday.
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“During my time as acting secretary and undersecretary, I met a lot of World War II veterans,” Modly said. “Almost all of them were in their 90s and started from very humble beginnings. I initially wanted to figure out a way to honor them, particularly enlisted sailors.”
Around that time, he said, he also learned a lot about the racially segregated conditions during World War II — and heard many stories about young Black sailors.
“The Doris Miller story stood out to me,” Modly said. It was a prime example of an enlisted sailor who faced discrimination but still “was a patriot and did his duty” when the nation needed him most.
“I just thought that was a tremendous example for all of our sailors — and particularly our enlisted sailors.”
Modly said he gathered a group of retired African American Navy admirals to help select a name for the ship.
“They were unanimous in telling me that Doris Miller was the right choice,” he said. “And I still believe it’s the right choice.”
Modly said he, too, would “of course” be disappointed if the carrier’s name were to be changed.
Congressional criticism
Since the CNN report on Aug. 20, some Virginia lawmakers have sharply criticized the Trump administration for considering renaming the ship.
U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, said in a statement that the idea of changing the carrier’s name “is outrageous and should be dismissed outright by every member of Congress.”
Both he and U.S. Sen. Mark Warner emphasized that the ship is slated to be the first carrier ever named for a Black sailor.
“It would be unbecoming of the president to even suggest taking that away for his own vanity,” Warner, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Sen. Tim Kaine, also a Democrat, noted that Miller gave his life to his nation before age 25.
Renaming the carrier after Trump “would be yet another act of juvenile cosplay” from an administration that should instead be focused on ending the unpopular war in Iran, Kaine said in a statement.
The offices of Republican U.S. Reps. Jen Kiggans and Rob Wittman did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Nothing to announce’
By Navy policy, the authority to name warships rests with the secretary of the Navy. That post is filled by Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao, a Virginia resident who ran for Kaine’s senate seat two years ago. Cao reports to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
A Navy spokesman in Washington declined to comment Friday on a possible carrier renaming, saying only: “The Navy has nothing to announce at this time.”
The future USS Doris Miller, projected to cost $15.6 billion, is the fourth Ford-class nuclear-powered carriers being built in Newport News. Construction is significantly behind schedule, with delivery now expected in early 2034.
Events touted Miller name
Naming the carrier was made with fanfare six years ago. The Navy unveiled the Doris Miller name on Jan. 20, 2020, during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony at Pearl Harbor.
The Navy said at the time that the Hawaiian base’s backdrop for the event “paid homage to the beginning and ending of America’s role in World War II and the scene where Doris Miller’s heroic actions cemented him into books of American history.”
On December 7, 1941, the Navy said, “Doris Miller did not let the prejudice of others define him.”
During the event, U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas — who had long pushed for the sailor to get the Medal of Honor — called Miller her “childhood hero.” In the segregated 1940s, she said, “a Black man from my hometown stepped up to help America.”
Johnson died in 2023.
“He did not realize how proud he was going to make this family,” Miller-Bledsoe added at the ceremony.
Since 2020, the Navy’s official ship listing website, the Naval Vessel Register, has listed the CVN-81 as the “Doris Miller.”
Keel-laying coming up
Since at least the 1970s, most Navy carriers have been named for past U.S. presidents.
Of the 10 Nimitz-class carriers, seven are named after presidents. But there have been several exceptions: the USS Nimitz, the USS Carl Vinson and the USS John C. Stennis.
Of the six current or future Ford-class ships that have so far been named, four have former president namesakes — the exceptions being the Enterprise and Doris Miller.
The keel-laying ceremony for CVN-81 — marking the ship’s spine being laid in dry dock — is expected to take place this year at the Newport News yard, a company spokesman said. But no date has been set.
The ship’s sponsor, usually a relative of the namesake, typically attends the keel laying ceremony. The sponsor declares the keel “true and fairly laid,” and etches initials into a metal plate affixed to the ship.
But with the name of the carrier now in doubt, it’s unclear who will perform that role for the CVN-81.
Miller-Bledsoe said no one in Doris Miller’s family has been contacted about attending such a ceremony, even as it’s supposed to take place in the coming months.
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“No, we have not,” she said.
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, [email protected]