Dr Aidan MacCarthy, from Castletownbere in west Cork, led a daring life; at 28, he joined the RAF as WWII ravaged the skies over Britain, was evacuated from Dunkirk after outlasting three days of Nazi bombardment, and received the George’s Cross for running into a crashed plane to save the passengers inside.
But it was when Dr MacCarthy volunteered to serve in Asia after Japan took Singapore that his story becomes incredible – captured in Java, the Cork man endured four years as a POW in Nagasaki, and then survived the atomic bomb that wiped out the city on August 9th, 1945.
In his autobiography, A Doctor’s War, Aidan McCarthy casually ticks over the many near-death experiences he endured during his time in the RAF and as a POW at the Mitsubishi Steel & Iron Works in Nagasaki. During his imprisonment, a US submarine actually sank the ship transporting him to Japan. While he was there, he gained a reputation for the care he showed to his patients, and the ingenuity he displayed in treating patients in terrible conditions.
“He had a horrific time,” MacCarthy’s daughter Nicola told Pat Kenny today. “He was lucky because physically and mentally he was strong, but they were starved and they were tortured. They were in fear of their lives, they didn’t know if they would wake up the next morning.”
Dr MacCarthy's daughter Kathleen with his autobiography, A Doctor's War
But the enduring mystery of Dr MacCarthy’s time in Japan surrounds a samurai sword – finely crafted, still razor sharp, and with a handle containing the ashes of the ancestors of a Japanese family, which now hangs on the walls of MacCarthy’s.
During his period as a POW, Dr MacCarthy was forced to build a concrete bomb shelter. When the atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 11:02, MacCarthy and his guards took refuge in the shelter – just one mile from the epicentre of the explosion. Emerging later on, amid the rain of ashes and total devastation, Nagasaki was no more.
The soldiers were moved on to a camp outside the rubble and desolation of the city, to CampFukuoka 26 near Keisen.
It was there that Dr MacCarthy learned that Japan had surrendered, the war had ended and that he and his fellow POWs were free. The soldiers had intended to kill their guard, 2nd Lieutenant Isao Kusuno, but MacCarthy locked him into a shed, saving his life.
Kusono presented the Irishman with his ceremonial sword, an ancestral relic passed down through the family, along with a photograph inscribed with the words: “To my friend Dr MacCarthy, I give you this sword as a token of our friendship.”
Now, a new documentary tells the extraordinary tale of the brilliant Irish doctor and his souvenir of his time spent in Nagasaki. Directed by Gary Lennon, A Doctor’s Sword premieres at the Cork Film Festival on Sunday, at a sold out screening. Check out the trailer for the documentary below:
Here is the interview in full:
