Cool Bios

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

This bonus episode tells the story of how the remarkable life of Air Commodore Aidan MacCarthy came to be told as a podcast series, why it deserves to be told on the big screen, and why — as the last survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pass from us — the story of what happened on August 6th and August 9th 1945 matters more than ever. A warning from history. And a tribute to one of the most extraordinary Irishmen of the 20th century.

Thank you for listening to The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb, produced by Cool Bios.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Nine: The Dawn Comes Up Again

It is August 9th 1945. The atomic bomb has fallen on Nagasaki. Aidan MacCarthy crawls out of his shelter, swims the Urakami river and immediately gets to work treating the survivors of the worst single act of destruction in the history of warfare. On August 15th the Emperor of Japan announces unconditional surrender. MacCarthy assembles his fellow prisoners in the compound and announces the news in a voice faltering with emotion. They cry, hug each other, drop to their knees and thank God. Then begins the long journey home. Through Okinawa, Manila, San Francisco, across Canada and across the Atlantic. He arrives in Dublin at the end of November 1945 to news that will break his heart. But Aidan MacCarthy has survived everything the world has thrown at him. And he faces what remains of his life with the same quiet determination that carried him through it all. The final episode of The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb.

Thank you for listening.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Eight: The Longest Year

It is the autumn of 1944. Aidan MacCarthy is a prisoner in Nagasaki, working in the Mitsubishi shipyards, sabotaging the rivets on a Japanese aircraft carrier. As the most senior officer in the camp he is beaten daily for every offence committed by his fellow prisoners. His family in Ireland have been told he is dead. The London Gazette has removed his name from the RAF list and stopped his pay. In the coal mines outside the city, the prisoners dig their own graves and watch a machine gun platform being built above them. They are all going to die. Unless something dramatic happens. On August 9th 1945 the B-29s alter course and come back over Nagasaki. And something dramatic happens.

Episode Nine coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Seven: Into the Abyss

It is April 1944. Aidan MacCarthy is on a prison ship heading for Japan with 1,200 fellow prisoners packed into holds that resemble the slave ships of an earlier century. On the final night of the voyage, with the lights of the Japanese mainland in sight, the prisoners sing Vera Lynn songs on deck. Then the torpedo strikes. MacCarthy is in the water for 12 hours in the East China Sea, treating the injured on floating wreckage, watching a Japanese destroyer beat survivors and throw them overboard, and praying a simple prayer. Please God, don't let me die. Not now. Not after so much. He is eventually rescued by a Japanese whaling boat and brought ashore at Nagasaki, where 82 survivors stand naked on the dock. He can barely believe he is still alive. He can barely believe his own signature when he writes his name.

Episode Eight coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Six: The Longest Road

It is 1943. Aidan MacCarthy is deep into his captivity in Java. A prison guard fractures his elbow with a rifle butt in the dysentery hut. A 3rd year Japanese medical student operates on him without anaesthetic. He is moved to Bandung in the mountains in a sealed goods wagon in which men die of heat in the darkness. At Bandung he keeps men alive with typhoid vaccine injections, secretly treats cases of leprosy, and watches helplessly as 20 diabetic prisoners die when their insulin is cut off without warning. Then comes the Cycle Camp and its drug-addicted sadistic commandant Lieutenant Sonne. And through the camp gates one day stumbles a procession of scarecrows, 250 blind survivors of an original 1,000, all that remains of a working party sent to a barren island in the Ambon Sea. MacCarthy watches them and keeps going. Because that is what he does.

Episode Seven coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Five: The Prisoner

It is March 1942. Aidan MacCarthy is a prisoner of the Japanese in Java. The Imperial Guards have given way to more brutal captors. A Wing Commander is executed by firing squad in front of the assembled prisoners. MacCarthy is beaten unconscious for saluting a monkey. And with no medicines, no supplies, and men dying of dysentery around him, he does what he has always done. He finds a way. Maggot soup as protein supplement. Riceballs injected with yeast cultures smuggled between camps. A tin of sausages buried for Christmas morning that turns out to contain asparagus tips. This is the story of a doctor who refused to be beaten by circumstances that would have broken most men.

Episode Six coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Four: Into Captivity

It is early 1942. Aidan MacCarthy is aboard a troopship in the Indian Ocean, bound for Singapore. But Singapore is already falling. Diverted to Java, MacCarthy finds himself in the middle of the Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies - treating the wounded under fire, stopped at gunpoint by Japanese paratroopers in the jungle, and retreating through terrain that throws tiger cubs, crocodiles, and coconut-throwing monkeys at his convoy in equal measure. Then comes the moment they had all been dreading. The Japanese walk into their mountain position without a shot being fired. The dream of resistance is over. Captivity has begun.

Episode Five coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and 3 and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was 1 mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Three: The George Medal

It is May 1941. At 2 o'clock in the morning at RAF Honington in Suffolk, a Wellington bomber returning from a raid over Germany comes down on the base. What follows will earn Aidan MacCarthy the George Medal — presented personally by King George VI at Buckingham Palace. But the Palace visit produces a moment that MacCarthy would remember for the rest of his life — and not because of the medal. Then comes the posting that changes everything. Bound for North Africa, MacCarthy finds himself re-routed to Singapore. The Japanese are coming. And the worst is yet to come.

Episode Four coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was one mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Episode Two: Into the Fire

It is 1939. Aidan MacCarthy has his medical degree and has made his way to London. War is coming and a decision has to be made. In a West End nightclub, a hostess flips a coin — and the course of MacCarthy's life is decided in an instant. He joins the RAF and within months finds himself in France as the German offensive tears through northern Europe. This episode follows MacCarthy from the chaos of the French retreat to the beaches of Dunkirk — where he tends the wounded under fire and waits, foxhole by foxhole, for a ship that may never come.

Episode Three coming soon.

The Doctor Who Survived the Atomic Bomb

The true story of Aidan MacCarthy. An Irish doctor who survived Dunkirk, a torpedoed prison ship, and three and a half years as a Japanese prisoner of war. A man who was one mile from the epicentre when the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. And survived.

A tale of courage, endurance, and an extraordinary will to survive. A story so remarkable it deserves to be on the big screen.

Five episodes. One extraordinary life.

Episode One.

It begins on a rugby pitch in County Kildare in the spring of 1930. Aidan MacCarthy is seventeen years old, in his final year at Clongowes Wood College. The following autumn he will enter medical school in Cork. The future looks ordinary and full of promise. He has absolutely no idea what is coming. This episode tells the story of who Aidan MacCarthy was before the war found him. Where he came from, how he was shaped, and how that prepared him for an extraordinary series of events that would test most men beyond the limits of endurance.

Subscribe now. Episode Two coming soon.