Above and Beyond the Call of Duty (1943), David Stone Martin's Dorie Miller

Above and Beyond the Call of Duty is OWI Poster No. 68, printed in 1943 and signed by David Stone Martin. It shows Dorie Miller, a Black sailor, in dress whites with the Navy Cross, and records that he "Received the Navy Cross at Pearl Harbor, May 27, 1942" (NAID 513747).

What the poster prints

The poster names its subject, which many wartime sheets did not. The archive describes Dorie Miller in Navy dress whites with the Navy Cross on his chest and ships burning behind him. The text is a quoted phrase, his name, and one line of record.

"above and beyond the call of duty"

DORIE MILLER

Received the Navy Cross

at Pearl Harbor, May 27, 1942

[signature:] David Stone Martin

[imprint:] OWI Poster No. 68. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D.C.

[imprint:] U.S. Government Printing Office : 1943-O-530929

Who issued it

The Office of War Information printed it as No. 68 in its numbered series, with art signed by David Stone Martin. The sheet itself gives the date and place of the award. It does not describe what Miller did at Pearl Harbor, and this page does not supply the story from outside the record.

How to read it

The archive tags it as testimonial and transfer. The testimonial is a real person's recognized conduct, offered as an example. The transfer is the medal and the burning fleet, which lend the moment's weight to the message.

What sets the sheet apart is whom the government chose to honor. A federal poster put a named Black sailor at the center of the frame, in full dress, with a Navy decoration on his chest. That was a public statement that his service belonged to the national story. The poster says nothing about the terms on which Black Americans served in 1943, and the archive's record does not take that up either. A reader can hold the tribute and that silence together.

There is no ask printed on the sheet: no bond, no job, no enlistment line. It works as recognition and as an argument about who counts as an American hero. The OWI poster index and the OWI domestic branch case study cover the office that issued it. Another 1943 OWI sheet in this set, The More Women at Work, also widens the picture of who the war effort included. The essay on the Roosevelt administration covers the office that issued it, from its founding order in June 1942 to the House cuts of 1943.