(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday the USNS Harvey Milk is being renamed the USNS Oscar V. Peterson, after he ordered the Navy to strike the name of the pioneering gay rights activist from the ship.
Hegseth made the announcement in a video posted to X.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegseth said. “We’re not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration. Instead, we’re renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, as it should be.”
Peterson, Hegseth said, was a chief watertender who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism during an attack on the USS Neosho by Japanese bombers during the Battle of Coral Sea in 1942.
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