Joseph Aidan MacCarthy, OBE, GM
Born(1913-03-19)19 March 1913
Castletownbere, County Cork, Ireland
Died11 October 1995(1995-10-11) (aged 82)
Northwood, London, United Kingdom
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branch Royal Air Force
RankAir Commodore
Service number23425
Battles/warsSecond World War
AwardsOfficer of the Order of the British Empire
George Medal
Other workDoctor

Air Commodore Joseph Aidan MacCarthy, OBE, GM (19 March 1913 – 11 October 1995) was an Irish doctor of the Royal Air Force and a prisoner of war to the Japanese during the Second World War. He survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945.

Early life

MacCarthy's Bar and Grocery (1989), where MacCarthy was born and spent childhood

Aidan MacCarthy was born on 19 March 1913, in the town of Castletownbere, Beara Peninsula, County Cork, Ireland, to Denis Florence MacCarthy and Julia (née Murphy).[1] He was one of ten children; five boys and five girls.[2] He was the sixth child and lived in an apartment above the family business, MacCarthy's Bar, established by his grandfather, Michael McCarthy.[1]

His parents owned land and businesses in the area.[1] He attended Clongowes Wood School and University College Cork.[1] He graduated with a medical degree in 1938. He was unable to obtain employment as a doctor in Ireland so he moved to the United Kingdom, working first in Wales, then in London.

It was there he met two former classmates from his medical school and, after a night of drinking with them, decided to join the British armed forces as a medical officer. Which service (the Royal Navy or the Royal Air Force) was decided for him by a coin toss made by a nightclub hostess in the early hours of the morning.[3]

RAF career

In 1940, he was posted to France and was evacuated from Dunkirk where he attended wounded Allied soldiers while under fire from German aircraft. In September 1940, he was promoted to flight lieutenant.[4]

The following year he was awarded the George Medal for his part in the rescue of the crew of a crashed and burning Wellington bomber at RAF Honington.[5] The aircraft had crash landed after its undercarriage had failed to lower and it came to rest on the airfield's bomb dump, where it caught fire. Together with Group Captain John Astley Gray, MacCarthy entered the burning wreck and rescued two crewmen, but were unable to save the pilot.[3] Gray was badly burned during the rescue; MacCarthy was also burned, but less seriously.[5] Both men were awarded the GM.

Posted to the Far East in 1941, MacCarthy was captured by the Japanese in Sumatra. The ship Tamahoko Maru transporting Allied prisoners to Japan was sunk by a US submarine on 24 June 1944. MacCarthy had to do the best he could for his patients whilst splashing around in the South China Sea. After being initially rescued by a Japanese destroyer the crew then started to throw rescued prisoners overboard and the remaining prisoners on the destroyer jumped back into the sea and clambered back on the wreckage.

A Japanese fishing boat pulled him out of the sea and transported him to Japan. There, he cared for Allied prisoners of war who were forced to work in horrific conditions. To the Japanese ear 'MacCarthy' and 'MacArthur' were indistinguishable. The Japanese assumed that MacCarthy must be a close blood relative of the American commander. Therefore, whenever MacCarthy answered his name, he was struck on the forehead. This may have contributed to his developing a brain clot in later life. He was in charge of a working party in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on that city on 9 August 1945. The prisoners had previously been warned, by secret radio, to take cover at a particular time of day without being given any further details. When the war ended, when some Australian ex-prisoners were attempting to lynch their Japanese captors, MacCarthy locked the Japanese guards in a cell and threw the key into the sea.

MacCarthy was the senior Allied serviceman in Japan at the surrender of Japan.

In 1946, MacCarthy was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire.[6] In 1948, he was promoted to the substantive rank of squadron leader,[7] having held the rank of acting squadron leader since 1940.

MacCarthy retired from the RAF in 1971 with the rank of air commodore, the highest rank available to non-combatant officers.[8]

Later years

MacCarthy later practised medicine in southern England. In 1979 he published an account of his wartime ordeal, titled A Doctor's War.

Death and legacy

Bob Jackson: A Doctor's War

MacCarthy died in Northwood, London on 11 October 1995.

MacCarthy's Bar has become a tourist attraction and is run by his daughters, Adrienne and Niki MacCarthy.[9][10] It houses the ceremonial sword gifted to him by Isao Kusuno, a Japanese officer during the War.[9] A 2015 documentary film A Doctor's Sword, produced by Bob Jackson and directed by Gary Lennon, tells MacCarthy's story.

In July 2017, Prince Harry formally named a new RAF medical centre, the Aidan MacCarthy Medical Centre, at RAF Honington in his honour.[11]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Jackson, Bob (2016). "1. Home". A Doctor's Sword. Dublin: The Collins Press. pp. 3–34. ISBN 978-1-84889-320-7.
  2. ↑ MacCarthy, Aidan (2006). "1. Beginnings: 1913-1939". A Doctor's War: Introduction by Pete McCarthy, author of McCarthy's Bar. London: Grub Street Publishing. p. 11. ISBN 1-904943-40-3.
  3. 1 2 "RAF Officer Aidan MacCarthy's Incredible Journey from Dunkirk to Nagasaki During World War II". historynet.com. World History Group. 6 June 2006. Retrieved 21 April 2014.
  4. ↑ "No. 34960". The London Gazette. 4 October 1940. p. 5835.
  5. 1 2 "No. 35270". The London Gazette. 9 September 1941. p. 5215.
  6. ↑ "No. 37744". The London Gazette. 27 September 1946. p. 4903.
  7. ↑ "No. 38175". The London Gazette. 9 January 1948. p. 260.
  8. ↑ Jackson, Bob (2016). A Doctor's Sword. Dublin: The Collins Press. ISBN 978-1-84889-320-7.
  9. 1 2 McGreevy, Ronan (9 August 2020). "The MacCarthy family: Their father survived Dunkirk, Nagasaki and a torpedoed ship. Will their pub survive Covid-19?". The Irish Times. Retrieved 16 November 2021.
  10. ↑ McDonald, Trudi. "'His life was saved by a rat': The incredible stories behind MacCarthy's Bar in Castletownbere". TheJournal.ie. Archived from the original on 16 November 2021.
  11. ↑ Jackson, Bob (2016). "Epilogue". A Doctor's Sword. Dublin: The Collins Press. pp. 243–262. ISBN 978-1-84889-320-7.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.