Mar 24, 2022 - Sale 2598

Sale 2598 - Lot 333

Price Realized: $ 8,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
(MILITARY--WORLD WAR TWO.) "Above and Beyond the Call of Duty": Dorie Miller Received the Navy Cross at Pearl Harbor. Poster, 28 x 20 inches; minor wear, tastefully restored at folds, laid down on linen. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943

Additional Details

In the segregated navy of the 1940s, Blacks were almost entirely restricted to service as mess attendants. When Pearl Harbor was attacked on 7 December 1941, one of the messmen on the USS West Virginia was Doris "Dorie" Miller. While the ship was under fire from the surprise attack, Miller carried a wounded officer from the deck, and then without any training took a position behind one of the ship's anti-aircraft guns. As he described it later, "It wasn't hard. I just pulled the trigger and she worked fine. I had watched the others with these guns. I guess I fired her for about fifteen minutes. I think I got one of those Jap planes. They were diving pretty close to us."

Once his identity became known, Miller received a Distinguished Service Cross, but after lobbying by the nation's Black press, he was awarded the yet more prestigious Navy Cross in May 1942. He died in the line of duty in November 1943.

The artist was David Stone Martin, who was otherwise best known for the art on hundreds of jazz record covers in the 1940s and 1950s. Only 2 other examples are traced in OCLC.