USS Indianapolis survivor, executive

Herbert Jay "Jack" Miner II was 19 and had been a radio technician aboard the USS Indianapolis for just 13 days when the cruiser was hit by Japanese torpedoes and sunk.

Floating in the South Pacific for four days, Mr. Miner was one of 317 men, out of a crew of nearly 1,200, to survive the ordeal. It was the worst single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy, with many of the men surviving the attack only to die of exposure, dehydration and shark attacks.

A longtime Chicago paper company executive, Mr. Miner, 82, died of congestive heart failure on Saturday, July 12, at his home in Lake Forest, said his daughter Nancy Guenther.

The story of the Indianapolis is well-chronicled in books and film, while Mr. Miner's own tale, which he later told to his family, school groups and writers, had its own unique twists.

Because another sailor had swiped the mattress from his below-deck bunk, Mr. Miner was sleeping on a cot top-side on the night of the attack. That probably saved his life, he later said, according to his daughter Catherine Miner.

The Indianapolis was torpedoed early on July 30, 1945. It had been on a mission to deliver parts of an atomic bomb to a remote American base in the Pacific Ocean. The ship went down quickly, and Mr. Miner jumped in the water and swam as fast as he could away from the ship so as not to get sucked under.

He came up for air thinking it was too late, that he was beneath the doomed ship. In fact, he had surfaced under a bucket.

"Oh yeah, we laughed about that," said Mike Kuryla, another survivor who became close to Mr. Miner after they met at a reunion in the early 1960s.

Kept afloat by a kapok life preserver and later a floating life net, Mr. Miner early on grabbed hold of a buddy and held on to him as long as he could. He later said the only nightmare he ever had about being adrift at sea was of his friend slipping from his grasp, his daughter said.

Through the long days and nights, he wound his Omega watch to keep track of time, and thought of his parents back home.

"If you give up, you just don't make it," Kuryla said. "He had something to live for."

Mr. Miner was born in Evanston and grew up in Glencoe, graduating from New Trier High School. He had completed one semester at Yale University before enlisting in the Navy, and completed his degree in engineering after the war.

He joined his father's business, Great Lakes Paper Co., which supplied paper and other supplies to lampshade manufacturers. His father died in 1974, and Mr. Miner retired around 1990.

An active member of USS Indianapolis survivor groups, Mr. Miner and other sailors testified in Washington in the 1990s to clear the name of the ship's captain, the late Charles Butler McVay III, who had been court-martialed after the war for not doing enough to avoid the submarine attack.

"Jack thought the captain was being made a scapegoat," Kuryla said. "We walked the halls and talked to all the politicians trying to get our captain exonerated."

President Bill Clinton cleared McVay in October 2000.

In a book on the Indianapolis, Mr. Miner talked about how the experience affected his life.

"It gave me a greater degree of self-confidence," he said. "It also made me more tolerant of life's many unimportant problems and more appreciative of life's simple pleasures."

Mr. Miner's wife, Gloria, died in 2007.

He is also survived by a son, David; and seven grandchildren.

A memorial service is set for 1:30 p.m. Aug. 9, at William H. Scott Funeral Home, 1100 Greenleaf Ave., Wilmette. Visitation will be 1 to 2:30 p.m., and there will be a gathering from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Skokie Country Club, 500 Washington Ave., Glencoe.