Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that a Navy ship has been renamed in honor of a Medal of Honor recipient.
The UNSN Harvey Milk will now be called the USNS Oscar V. Peterson.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegseth announced. “We’re not renaming the ship to anything political, this is not about political activists unlike the previous administration. Instead we are renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient.”
“During the Battle of the Coral Sea in May of 1942, Chief Water Tender Peterson led a repair party on the USS Neosho” after the ship was damaged by Japanese dive-bombers, Hegseth explained.
“Peterson himself was gravely wounded, yet he managed to single-handedly close the bulkhead stop valves, thereby helping to keep the ship operational,” he said. “In performing his historic actions and heroic actions, Peterson received additional injuries and burns which tragically resulted in his death.”
Peterson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
The USNS Harvey Milk was announced in 2016, toward the end of the Obama administration. It launched in 2021.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the decision to rename the vessel “shameful.”
“The reported decision by the Trump Administration to change the names of the USNS Harvey Milk and other ships in the John Lewis-class is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream,” she said in a statement earlier this month. “Our military is the most powerful in the world – but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos. Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
