Hey folks, Harry here with a little history for ya on that character that Cuba Gooding Jr plays in PEARL HARBOR... Like I said before... he's a small character... but I really liked the part he had... And the film is dead on accurate to the details below...
Harry,
Just a little history: Dorie Miller, a Navy messman aboard the USS Arizona, had no weapons training but he sucked it up and shot down four Japanese fighter planes during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He saved many a man who saw him as less than one.
Apparently, it was the norm in the military back then for blacks to be assigned to non-combat duty. That meant cleaning, cooking, step-in-fetching, digging ditches and moving dangerous ordinance (look up the Port of Chicago rebellion). The belief was that blacks weren't intelligent or disciplined enough for combat training.
Miller's story wasn't really picked up by the white press, but he became the poster boy for the black press and its "Double V: Victory Abroad, Victory at Home" campaign. The naive idea was this: "If we fight for freedom aboard, the powers that be will give us freedom at home." Jim Crow wasn't dismantled, but the acts of Dorie Miller, the Tuskegee Airmen and the like did lead to the desegregation of the military.
Miller should have gotten the Navy Cross during WWII, but racism raised it's ugly head. Decades later, after he died, he was awarded one.
Peace and hair grease,
Janette Rodrigues
P.S - Miller was a Texan.
