Kazuhira Miller

Kazuhira Miller, also known as Kaz, McDonell Benedict Miller, and Master Miller, was the second-in-command of the Militaires Sans Frontieres during the mid-1970s and FOXHOUND's survival trainer during the 1990s. He was well-read and possessed a vast array of scientific knowledge.

Early life
The child of an American GHQ officer and a Japanese woman, Kazuhira "Kaz" Miller was born in Japan, during the country's occupation by U.S. military forces, and was named after the Japanese word for "Peace" by his mother. Kaz was conceived as a result of his mother working as a prostitute, though his father treated her as a wife. Kaz's early life in Japan was a struggle, as he was born after his father had returned to America, and could not obtain Japanese citizenship due to his father being unknown. Many Japanese children would often mock him for his Western appearance, with his light blue eyes and ash blond hair. However, his father had left his mother some money prior to leaving, which she used to set up a shop, selling items such as cigarettes to occupation troops.

When Kaz was ten years old, his mother became ill, leaving him to run the shop by himself. While his mother was bedridden, he stumbled upon a picture of his father, and began showing it to the American soldiers who came into the store, asking if they knew who the man was. He eventually learned from one of his father's students that the man was Colonel Miller, who had retired from active duty and was serving as a military instructor. Kaz knew he wanted to go to America as well as meet his father, so he eventually sent a letter to him in the U.S., requesting to travel there.

That wish was eventually granted and Kaz was picked up from his home, left his mother behind, and went to the U.S. to get an education. Kaz's father eventually committed suicide, but that didn't stop him from completing school and earning his college degree in an Ivy League school, taking on his father's surname of Miller. He then returned to Japan, only to find that his mother wasn't angry that he had left her behind, but that she had simply forgotten who he was entirely, her mind having been affected by the disease, which she had contracted during her days as a prostitute. Shortly after returning, he joined the Japanese Self Defense Force.

Unfortunately for Kaz, life in the JSDF wasn't as glamorous as he had hoped. His skills as a policeman were unmatched, but his superiors often feared them and chose not to reward those skills, so he didn't rise through the ranks as quickly as one would expect. Furthermore, he longed for a more active battlefield than what life in Japan typically offered, and by 1970, he decided to leave the JSDF, especially after witnessing The Temple of the Golden Pavilion author Yukio Mishima's suicide at the JSDF Headquarters. After his mother died, he began to drift around the world as a mercenary and a well known philanderer who loved the freedom of the '70s.

Miller's travels eventually led him to meet Big Boss (Naked Snake) in Colombia, where he was fighting for the rebels and Big Boss for the Colombian government. Big Boss and his men had already wiped out all of Miller's unit, so Miller prepared to take his own life with a grenade and die fighting. Big Boss was impressed with his spirit, likening it to that of a samurai, and convinced him to instead join the Militaires Sans Frontieres. Miller played a vital role in the management of the MSF and supported Big Boss during his missions in Colombia.

In 1974, Miller brought Paz Ortega Andrade and Ramón Gálvez Mena to the Militaires Sans Frontieres camp on the Barranquilla Coast, after making sure that they weren't being followed by "their &quot;friends&quot; from Langley." Gálvez wanted to hire Big Boss and the MSF to repel an invasion force that had recently entered Costa Rica. Unlike Big Boss, Miller didn't really feel that the deal was a bad idea, especially with the offer of an offshore production facility in the Caribbean to use as a base of operations (as their current base was in disrepair). Big Boss eventually agreed to take Galvez's offer for Paz.

From the offshore facility, dubbed "Mother Base," Miller provided radio support, via unidirectional signals, to the MSF forces as they entered Costa Rica. Big Boss managed to find a radio within a nearby shipping facility and contacted Miller, noting the unusually large amount of radiation film badges located there, and the radioman that he had previously interrogated having mentioned something about "spears" being delivered in the cargo. Miller and Big Boss then realized that this could mean only one thing: nuclear weapons were being shipped into Costa Rica, something that Miller found horrifying.

Miller then suggested that Big Boss try and recruit a FSLN group that had been ousted from Nicaragua, to help in tracking down the supply route to the facility in Mount Irazu. Afterwards, he picked up Amanda Valenciano Libre, Chico Libre, and Cécile Cosina Caminades after Big Boss discovered them. Big Boss and Miller eventually learned that Hot Coldman, the CIA Station Chief of Central America, was the one behind the invasion and the Peace Walker Project. However, neither Big Boss nor Miller had known that Coldman was planning on using Peace Walker to launch a nuke towards Mother Base, namely to poison the fish and crops so that mass production could begin, but also to annihilate the MSF, Miller stated that Big Boss had to stop Peace Walker from arriving in Nicaragua. However, after that had failed, he considered evacuating Mother Base, but decided against it as the personnel believed in Big Boss.

Later on, Miller arrived with the majority of the MSF forces into Nicaragua to aid Big Boss in stopping Coldman's plans. After joining forces with Amanda's FSLN group, they took down the Peace Sentinels, arrested Gálvez (whose was really Vladimir Zadornov, a KGB agent), and a dying Coldman. Miller also lectured a distraught Paz in not picking up a gun unless she planned to use it. Miller discovered that Coldman activated Peace Walker, and not only was it going to be launched at Cuba (Zadornov had changed the target earlier), but it would also transmit false missile trajectories to third parties all over the world, including NORAD and the Pentagon. He alerted Big Boss and Strangelove (who were on their way to the Peace Walker unit to find out the answers to why The Boss and Big Boss fought in Tselinoyarsk) about what happened, with Coldman dying before he could give the abort code (a factor he had taken into account), forcing Big Boss and Strangelove to destroy the Peace Walker unit.

After the fiasco ended, Miller teamed up with Huey Emmerich and Strangelove in building Metal Gear ZEKE, which was created from the prototype weapons of Peace Walker Project. After Zadornov escaped for the seventh and last time, Big Boss told Kaz that Zadornov had "an accomplice" given his final words. Miller then noticed that ZEKE had started to move on its own, implying that someone had hijacked it, and noticed that Paz was acting strangely. Paz then revealed that she was really Pacifica Ocean, a Cipher agent. After disabling ZEKE and defeating Pacifica, Miller apologized to Big Boss because the former knew what Paz and Galvez were up to all along, but didn't tell Big Boss sooner. Miller had secretly been acting as a business partner to Cipher (Zero) in order to expand MSF, due to his belief that the mercenary business would become a new driving force in the world economy after the Cold War's end. However, Miller presumably stopped working for Cipher altogether after the latter had ordered Paz to launch a nuke at the East Coast, to frame the MSF as being an extremist cult should Big Boss refuse to rejoin Cipher.

Later career
At some point, Miller parted ways with Big Boss, adopted the name "McDonell Benedict Miller," and would later serve as a survival master within the SAS, the Green Berets, a U.S. Marine boot camp, and FOXHOUND. He also went on to volunteer as a coach in a mercenary school twice a year before eventually retiring. During his time as a drill sergeant in FOXHOUND, he was referred to as "Hell Master" and draftees called him "Master Miller" with the utmost respect. It was there that he met and helped train Solid Snake, among which he trained Solid Snake on how to sense an enemy if sight alone couldn't help, various methods of deciphering transceiver frequency codes , as well as using common appliances to hide under. Miller also became married to a woman named Nadine, with whom he fathered a daughter, named Catherine. He would later divorce his wife, after which he decided to reside in Los Angeles with his daughter.

In 1999, Master Miller was reunited with and assisted Solid Snake, whom he provided with information on improving one's health, along with guidance on how to overcome the various obstacles he faced there. During Snake's battle with Big Boss, Miller referred to his former MSF commander and friend as a "monster."

By 2005, McDonell Miller had retired and had moved to Alaska to live in solitude, in a three story house with his huskies, occasionally helping to train the Alaskan scouts during his free time. However, three days prior to FOXHOUND's revolt on Shadow Moses Island, Miller was murdered in his home by an unknown assailant. Liquid Snake, FOXHOUND's squad leader, then assumed Miller's identity in order to aid Solid Snake in his mission to Shadow Moses, providing him with information on how to operate within the Alaskan environment. After Snake unwittingly activated Metal Gear REX, Liquid mockingly revealed his true identity to him.

Trivia

 * Miller had an older half-brother who died in Vietnam, which was one reason why his father was depressed when he met him and eventually committed suicide.
 * During his time with the Militaires Sans Frontieres, Miller had a bit of a womanizing problem. On one occasion, he had gone out with two of the female members of the MSF at the exact same time, causing them to report it to Big Boss. Big Boss then read Miller the riot act (presumably as the latter's punishment for his womanizing behavior), leading Miller to argue with Big Boss that caused them to get into a brawl in the showers, which Paz ended up witnessing.
 * During his attendance one of the MSF's monthly birthday parties, Miller attempted to shield Paz from the crude atmosphere of the party, but he inevitably became drunk himself, and as a result he began mooning everybody, saying that they should see "the real Kazuhira Miller."
 * During his childhood, he had neighbors who owned a pet pig named "Pooyan." His memories of the pig, as well as the fulton recovery balloons resembling pigs, were what inspired him to refer to the missions involving stopping enemy usage of fulton recovery balloons as "Pooyan missions."
 * In 1974, Miller asked Cipher (Zero) about "the sons" of Big Boss. In his later years, Miller became a mentor to one of the sons, Solid Snake, while the other, Liquid Snake, was involved in his death in 2005.
 * Miller's favorite food was curry.

Unconfirmed history
McDonell Miller was once placed in a POW camp in Vietnam, although he later managed to escape, decapitating the head interrogator in the process. While serving in FOXHOUND, one of the various radio codes that Miller taught Snake was changing the frequency by claiming to change cigarette brands, and also taught Snake how to determine whether a person was lying by their eyes.

In 2005, Miller was murdered in his home by a nerve toxin.

Behind the scenes
Master Miller first appeared in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, where he was originally depicted as an Asian-looking man with black hair. In Metal Gear Solid, the character is depicted with blond hair and aviator sunglasses. Revisions of Metal Gear 2 following the 2004 mobile phone version depicted Miller in this design. In the English re-release of Metal Gear 2, Miller's first name was mistakenly spelled as "McDonnell." His original biography, given in the MSX2 manual (and included in the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database) stated that he was a third generation Japanese American, and was born in the United States sixty years after his grandparents immigrated there from Japan, though this account was later retconned in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

Metal Gear Solid
Master Miller is murdered prior to the events of Metal Gear Solid, with his role on Solid Snake's radio support team impersonated by Liquid Snake. His character portrait in the game's Codec screen is that of Miller, complete with sunglasses, though Liquid's actual physical resemblance is used during some moments of fourth wall breaking; he physically "unmasks" himself to the player via the Codec screen, upon revealing his true identity, and later asks Snake whether he liked "his sunglasses." These actions, however, were kept within the novelization.

Earlier in the game, during Solid Snake's fight with Liquid's Hind D, if the player attempts to contact Miller by Codec, there will be no response. This serves as a bit of foreshadowing as to who "Miller" really is.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
Master Miller makes a vocal cameo when, while crawling through a tunnel vent near the Tank Hangar building in Act 4, an audio flashback of when Master Miller, actually Liquid Snake, contacted Snake while crawling through the vents. His voice is also heard when Snake took the elevator down to the underground base, with an audio flashback of Miller telling Snake that Naomi Hunter may be a spy. In addition, a "ghost" of Master Miller, based on his face portrait from Metal Gear Solid, will apparate in a photograph.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Miller's view of the Militaires Sans Fontieres as being a "new type of business" foreshadows the development of the war economy and the spread of PMC activity across the world, as portrayed in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

Miller is a unique staff member at Mother Base, available from the start of the game. He requests Big Boss assign him to any of the unit divisions as they were initially understaffed. His skill ("Mother Base Deputy Commander") increases morale of all staff on assigned team. However, if he is assigned to the Combat Unit he cannot be used in missions.


 * Life: 7000
 * Psyche: 7000
 * GMP: 7875


 * Combat Unit: B
 * Shoot: B
 * Reload: B
 * Throw: B
 * Place: B
 * Walk Speed: B
 * Run Speed: B
 * Fight: B
 * Defense: B
 * R&D Team: B
 * Mess Hall Team: A
 * Medical Team: B
 * Intel Team: A

If the player (either as Big Boss or one of the MSF members) calls Miller while wearing his uniform during a mission, he'll tell the player that he gave them a dirty uniform as he goes by a certain fashion routine.

If the player manages to rescue a female POW via fulton recovery, Miller will remark "whew, all right!" instead of the usual statements of his successfully retrieving a soldier/male POW via fulton recovery.

An Extra Op featured in Peace Walker portrays Miller as being bisexual, with Big Boss having the opportunity to go on a date with him. The non-serious nature of this mission, similar to the "Date with Paz", likely suggests non-canonicity.

When commencing the Main Ops mission "Head to the Control Tower", when Kazuhira Miller gives the mission details, there will be sounds in the background that sounds like an engine due to his attempting to arrive at the base with one of the Huey helicopters with the other MSF soldiers to aid Snake.