روز اول

SUNDAY MORNING AT PEARL HARBOR

At breakfast time on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Dorie Miller was serving coffee aboard the battleship West Virginia.

Dorie was black, and the highest job to which he could then aspire in the U.S. Navy was that of messman.

While Dorie was technically a member of a great fighting fleet, he was not expected to fight. Most Army and Navy officers inveighed against blacks as fighting men. Although blacks were nettled by such overt prejudice, Dorie Miller apparently accepted being relegated to the role of a messhall servant. Now, as he poured the coffee, Dorie was wondering why the airplanes above were making so much noise on a peaceful Sunday morning.