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From left: Oscar V. Peterson and Harvey Milk
Sailors will undoubtedly take pride in honoring World War II hero Peterson, but there was no reason not to take pride in Milk.
The man whose name is replacing Harvey Milk’s on a U.S. Navy ship is a World War II hero and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient.
Oscar Verner Peterson — apparently a straight man, by the way — was chief watertender on USS Neosho, an oil tanker, when it was fired on by Japanese planes on May 7, 1942, during the battle of the Coral Sea. He was seriously wounded in the attack, as were most of his comrades, so he took it upon himself to “close four bulkhead steam line valves and keep the ship operational,” according to Idaho’s Times-News. “In the process, he suffered third-degree burns on his face, arms, shoulders and hands.”
He died six days later, after having been picked up by another ship, along with other survivors. He was buried at sea and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration.
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“His spirit of self-sacrifice and loyalty, characteristic of a fine seaman, was in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service,” says the Medal of Honor website. “He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.”
Peterson was a career Navy man. He was born in 1899 in Prentice, Wisconsin, and enlisted in the Navy from California in 1920, according to a site called Pacific Wrecks. By the time of his death, his wife, Lola, and their sons, Donald and Fred, had moved to Richfield, Idaho.
Lola Peterson died in 1991, and Donald around 2008. But Fred Peterson was present at a 2010 ceremony dedicating a grave marker to his father in Richfield. Lola Peterson, who had simply received her husband’s Medal of Honor in the mail, had long fought for such a marker. Gayle Alvarez, a member of the Idaho Medal of Honor Society’s board, took up the effort and applied for the marker in 2009.
“The aftermath to Lola must have been devastating,” Rear Adm. James A. Symonds said at the event, according to the Times-News. “I believe she would have benefited greatly by a presentation with more ceremony, with more importance, than receiving her husband’s medal in the mail.” He presented Fred Peterson and his wife, Mary, with the medal and a 48-star U.S. flag at the event, held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints chapel in Richfield. The U.S. then had 48 states. An American flag and a Medal of Honor flag were raised at the Richfield cemetery.
Symonds praised Oscar Peterson by saying, “For the [commanding officer] to save as many men as possible for a potential rescue by another ship … was in part available because Chief Peterson closed those main steam line bulkhead stopwells, isolating the steam in the engine room.”
In the Coral Sea, the U.S. forces were able to keep the Japanese away from Australia, and the action there led to another American victory at Midway Island in June 1942, “dramatically turning the course of the war in the Pacific,” Symonds said at the ceremony.
“I survived it better than I thought I would,” Fred Peterson told the Times-News of the event. Still, it was “kind of like opening up a wound again,” he said.
Symonds noted, “Certainly the first reaction of the family must be, ‘Why my husband? Why my dad?’ Maybe later with time and a perspective fed by other stories, they become, ‘Wow, that was my dad.’”
The removal of Milk’s name from the oiler — a ship that refuels other ships — is part of the Trump administration’s effort to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the federal government. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the renaming during Pride Month, an apparently deliberate timing. He revealed Friday on social media that the ship would now be named for Peterson, as the government is “taking the politics out of ship naming.” Hegseth has also said, “People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in.”
Stuart Milk, the nephew of Harvey Milk and an activist for LGBTQ+ rights, told ABC News there’s no reason not to be proud of his uncle. Harvey Milk served in the Navy during the Korean War and was forced out for being gay. In 1977, he became the first out gay elected official in California, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by a former member of the board, Dan White, in 1978.
Related: Who was Harvey Milk?
Stuart Milk met with sailors on the USNS Harvey Milk before the renaming was announced and found they were “very proud to serve” on it, he told ABC. The renaming is “a pretty big step back,” he said, but he added, “The fact of the matter is my uncle's legacy will live well past the 40 years’ life of a military ship.”
The USNS Harvey Milk was launched in 2021, when Joe Biden was president. Other planned ships in its class were set to be named for civil rights activists as well, but that likely will not happen now.
