Miller, Doyle Allen, Cox

Petty Officer Third Class (Coxswain) Doyle Miller was Killed in Action on December 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  He was stationed aboard the USS Arizona BB39.

Service number: 3421397

           Doyle Allen Miller - MIA Aboard the Battleship USS Arizona 7 Dec 1941
 
                      Doyle Miller Was a Hero Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice for Our Freedom
                                   
Doyle Miller was born in Adona, Perry County, Arkansas on August 7, 1920.  According to the 1930 U.S. Census, Doyle’s father, George, 40, was a farmer.  His mother, Eva, 38, had three children living at home at this time; Doyle 10, Catherine, 11 and Thelma, 6 years old.  The family lived on a farm in Red Lick, Johnson County, Arkansas.
   
After high school, Miller joined the Navy on October 4, 1939 in Kansas City, Missouri.  Doyle became a crew member of the ill-fated battleship USS Arizona on December 31, 1939.  U.S. Navy Muster Rolls indicate that Miller spent some time on temporary duty aboard the battleship USS Nevada, beginning in 31 Jan 1941.  His duties were that of a Coxswain, operating and steering boats, with a Navy Service Number of 342 13 97.
 
ARIZONA's last Fleet problem was XXI, and was remediated with gunnery exercises around the Hawaiian Islands with the rest of the fleet. At its conclusion, the United States Fleet was retained in the Hawaiian waters, based at Pearl Harbor. She operated in the Hawaiian Operating Area until late that summer, when she returned to Long Beach on 30 September 1940. She was then overhauled at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, Washington, into the following year. Her last flag change-of-command occurred on 23 January 1941, when Rear Admiral Willson was relieved of Commander, Battleship Division 1 by Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd.
 
The battleship returned to Pearl Harbor on 3 February 1941 to resume the intensive training maintained by the Pacific Fleet. She made one last visit to the West coast, clearing "Pearl" on 11 June 1941 for Long Beach, ultimately returning to her Hawaiian base on 8 July 1941. Over the next five months, she continued exercises and battle problems of various kinds on type training and tactical exercises in the Hawaiian operating area. She underwent a brief overhaul at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard commencing on 27 October 1941, receiving the foundation for a search radar atop her foremast. She conducted her last training in company with her division mates NEVADA (BB-36) and OKLAHOMA (BB-37), conducting a night firing exercise on the night of 4 December 1941. All three ships moored at quays ("keys") along Ford Island on the 5th.
 
Scheduled to receive tender availability, ARIZONA took the repair ship VESTAL (AR-4) along side on Saturday the 6th. The two ships were thus moored together on the morning of 7 December 1941; among the men on board ARIZONA that morning were Rear Admiral Kidd and the battleship's captain, Doylelin Van Valkenburgh.
 
On the morning of 7 December 1941, a fleet of Japanese carriers launched an air strike against the U.S. Pacific Fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The attack decimated the ships and personnel of the fleet and thrust the United States into World War II. At the onset of the 7 December 1941 attack, the battleship USS Arizona (BB-39) was moored at berth Fox 7 on “Battleship Row.” The repair ship Vestal (AR-4) was on the port side; and the starboard side faced the northeastern shore of Ford Island. Just before 8 am, the ship’s air raid alarm was sounded and the crew was ordered to general quarters. During the attack the battleship was struck by as many as eight aerial bombs, including one 1,700-lb armor-piercing shell which penetrated the deck near the Number 2 Turret and detonated in the smokeless powder magazine, causing a “cataclysmic” explosion “which destroyed the ship forward” and ignited a fire which burned for two days. Most of the Arizona crewmen who perished in the attack died instantly during the explosion. The ship quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor along with 1,177 of the 1,512 personnel on board, representing about half the total number of Americans killed that day.

Doyle Miller was one of the many tragically killed on that dark day on December 7, 1941. His body was never recovered. Miller is memorialized at the Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Punchbowl), Courts of the Missing.  Many of the sailors were trapped below decks when the battleship went down.  Thier bodies were never recovered.  The USS Arizona Memorial was placed over that site in Pearl Harbor. He was awarded the Purple Heart posthumously.
 
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPPA) is responsible for identifying remains of unidentified WWII fallen service men using DNA analysis recently developed.  From the DPAA website, the following quote is listed: “Based on all information available, DPAA assessed the individual's case to be in the analytical category of Non-recoverable.”
 
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This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.
 
Resources:
https://pearlharbor.org/facts-uss-arizona-bb-39/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/55923375/doyle-allen-mille
https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/86683206:6224?tid=&pid=&queryId=
U.S., World War II Navy Muster Rolls
1930 U. S. Census
U.S., Headstone and Interment Records for U.S., Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil

Joyce, Robert (SBTS Historian), AT2   21 Nov 2021