On This Day: An Irish doctor survives the bombing of Nagasaki

Dr. Aidan MacCarthy, from Co Cork, survived after the US dropped a nuclear bomb, codenamed Fat Man, over the city of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945.

MacCarthy, a University College Cork-trained medic from West Cork, was given a samurai sword by the commandant of a Nagasaki prison camp, Second Lieutenant Isao Kusuno, whom MacCarthy had saved from a lynching by prisoners after the bomb was dropped.

The Irish man's fascinating life, which also included brushes with death at Dunkirk and Java, was examined in the 2015 Irish documentary "A Doctor's Sword," as well as in a book of the same name the following year.

The movie follows MacCarthy’s family’s search to uncover the origin of the sword, which now resides in the famous MacCarthy’s Bar in Castletownbere, Co Cork.

At 28, MacCarthy joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) in London as the Second World War began. Soon after, he found himself evacuated from Dunkirk. In May 1941, he received the George’s Cross for rescuing the crew of a burning RAF plane that had crashed into a bomb dump on landing. He volunteered for service in Asia as Singapore fell to the Japanese and was captured in Java. He survived almost four years of brutal captivity enduring starvation, malnutrition, forced labor, beatings, and torture as a prisoner of war.

He volunteered for service in Asia as Singapore fell to the Japanese and was captured in Java. He survived almost four years of brutal captivity enduring starvation, malnutrition, forced labor, beatings, and torture as a prisoner of war.

MacCarthy was a prisoner of war at the camp attached to the Mitsubishi Steel and Ironworks in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 11:02 am on August 9, 1945. This was the beginning of the end of his captivity and he later returned home with a Samurai sword which was given to him as a gift by the prisoner-of-war camp commander at the end of the war.

The documentary tells Dr. Aidan MacCarthy’s incredible story of resilience and bravery, and his daughter Nicola’s journey to find the family of the Japanese officer who gave their ancestral sword to her father.

"A Doctor's Sword" premiered at the Cork Film Festival in November 2015 to a sold-out crowd, prompting a second screening. It later aired on PBS America.

* This article was originally published in 2015. Last updated in August 2023.