Aiden MacCarthy

Air Commodore Joseph Aidan MacCarthy, (1914 – 1995) was an Irish doctor of the Royal Air Force who showed great courage, resourcefulness and humanity during his capture by the Japanese during the Second World War.

Early life
MacCarthy was born in 1914 in the town of Castletownbere, County Cork, Ireland. His parents owned land and businesses in the area. He attended Clongowes Wood School and University College Cork.

Military career
He served in the RAF as a medical officer, eventually reaching the rank of Air Commodore. In 1940 he was posted to France and was evacuated from Dunkirk where he attended wounded Allied soldiers while under fire from German aircraft. 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.

Posted to the Far East in 1941, MacCarthy was captured by the Japanese in Sumatra. The prison ship transporting Allied prisoners to Japan was sunk by US bombers. MacCarthy had to do the best he could for his patients whilst splashing around in the South China Sea. A Japanese fishing boat pulled him out of the ocean 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.

He was the senior Allied serviceman in Japan at the Japanese surrender. Japan presented its surrender, initially, to him before Gen. MacArthur and his party arrived in Tokyo Bay several days after the end of the war.

Later years
MacCarthy later practiced medicine in southern England. In 1979 he published a remarkable account of his wartime ordeal, titled A Doctor's War. He died in Northwood, London on 11 October 1995.