MacCarthy, (Joseph) Aidan (1913–95), RAF physician, was born 19 March 1913 at Castletown, Berehaven (Castletownbere), Co. Cork, one of ten children (five boys and five girls) born to Daniel Florence MacCarthy, a local publican and businessman, and Julia MacCarthy (née Murphy). Educated at a local Dominican convent and then at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, he was more interested in sports than academic studies but applied himself to his books sufficiently to enter the Cork medical school. After graduating BA, B.Ch., and BAO in 1938, he found the prospect of breaking into the closed shop of general practice in Ireland uninviting, and elected instead to seek work in Britain. He moved to the UK in early 1939 and worked for a while as a locum in Wales and then in Hackney Wick, London, in one of the last of the so-called ‘shilling surgeries’, where patients saw a general practitioner for five minutes for a flat fee of a shilling and then paid sixpence for each additional three minutes. Wary of drifting, he decided to join the medical branch of the RAF and signed up at the end of the summer.
At the outbreak of war in September 1939 MacCarthy was posted to a training wing in Hastings and later to a unit in France. After the retreat from Dunkirk in 1940, he was posted as senior medical officer, with the rank of squadron leader, to RAF Honington, where, in May 1941, he led the rescue of two airmen from a burning Wellington bomber that had crashed into a bomb store while returning to base. He suffered burns to his face and was awarded the George Medal in November 1941 for his bravery. The day after the award ceremony he received orders to join a special mission to north Africa to clear the Pantelleria channel between Sicily and Tunisia. However, his delight at the prospect of action was shortlived: while the fighter wing was in transit the mission was cancelled, and the convoy ship continued to Singapore, where the airmen were redeployed to help stem the Japanese invasion of Malaya.
MacCarthy was captured by Japanese forces in central Java in early 1942 and spent time at various prisoner of war camps, including the infamous Cycle Camp, before being transported to Japan in April 1944. During the voyage the ship carrying the prisoners was torpedoed and sunk, with the loss of more than 400 lives; MacCarthy was one of only eighty-two men who survived. He was rescued and taken to a POW camp at Nagasaki, where he was forced to work in the surrounding factories. At one point in 1944 the prisoners were allowed to send postcards home: when the camp authorities discovered that there were thirteen prisoners with addresses in southern Ireland, they were gathered together and the camp commandant berated them for supporting Britain against Japan, and had them flogged. In August 1945, while being forced to dig their own graves, he and a handful of other prisoners survived the dropping of the second atom bomb on Nagasaki by sheltering in a makeshift bomb shelter. Awaiting liberation by the US army, MacCarthy tended the injured Japanese people of the destroyed city. It was three months before he was debriefed and transported back to Britain, and he finally returned to Ireland at the end of November 1945. He found his mother seriously ill at home at Berehaven; she had believed him to be dead and his brother had been killed by the last V2 bomb dropped on London on 5 March 1945. She died on Christmas Eve 1945.
When he rejoined his unit MacCarthy was awarded the OBE (1946). He continued to serve in the RAF as a senior medical officer at bases overseas in Hong Kong, France, and Germany. Promoted to wing commander then group captain, he was serving as the officer commanding at the RAF hospital at Wegberg in Bavaria, when he collapsed from the effects of a brain tumour in 1969; he underwent an operation to remove the tumour in 1970 and retired from active service the following year. Retirement enabled him to settle down and he bought a house in Northwood, Middlesex. He continued to act as a medical consultant to the RAF and worked until 1993.
A man of great common sense and generosity, MacCarthy lived life to the full and was popular with his colleagues. His deep faith sustained him through the suffering he endured as a prisoner of war, and in recognition of his service to the catholic church he was made a Knight of St Sylvester, a papal award of which he was very proud. He was saddened by the decision of Buckingham Palace to make the Japanese emperor Hirohito, who had ruled Japan during the war, a Knight of the Garter in October 1971. Although he never talked about his war-time experiences, after his collapse in 1969 he was encouraged to write about them in order to keep his brain active. What started out as physiological therapy became psychologically therapeutic, and a friend encouraged him to complete his autobiography, which was published in 1979 as A doctor's war; an informative and detailed description of life as a doctor in Japanese POW camps, it was republished in 2005. Having survived the war, MacCarthy enjoyed every single day of his life: he loved reading, doing crossword puzzles, and listening to the radio, and took particular pleasure in the garden he created with his wife at their home at Northwood.
MacCarthy had met Kathleen Wall, a nurse from Galway, in post-war London and they were married in 1948. They had two daughters, Nicola and Adrienne, who later settled in his native Castletownbere. He died 11 October 1995 at Northwood, in his eighty-third year, and was buried at Castletownbere. His life story was the subject of several documentaries by RTÉ, and, by coincidence, an interview recorded by Kevin Walsh in 1990 was aired on the day of his funeral; in his honour, the assembled party listened to the programme during the post-funeral lunch. He is commemorated by the local Berehaven golf club in their annual Dr Aidan MacCarthy Memorial, and the family bar, run by MacCarthy's daughter Adrienne, featured in the book MacCarthy's bar (2001) by Pete MacCarthy.