Films at the Fleadh – A Doctor’s Story

We continue our series of posts on the films at 2015 Galway Film Fleadh, taking a look at Gary Lennon’s documentary A Doctor’s Story. The film screens Thursday July 9th, at 12:15pm in the Town Hall Studio.

A Doctor’s Sword tells the remarkable story of Aidan MacCarthy, a doctor from Castletownbere West Cork, who, at 28, joined the RAF in London as the 2nd World war began. Soon after he found himself evacuated from Dunkirk and in May 1941 received the George’s Cross for rescuing the crew of a burning RAF plane which had crashed into a bomb dump on landing. He volunteered for service in Asia as Singapore fell to the Japanese, was captured in Java and survived almost 4 years of brutal captivity enduring starvation, malnutrition, forced labour, beatings and torture as a prisoner of war.

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Aidan MacCarthy was a POW at the camp attached to the Mitsubishi Steel and Iron works in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 11:02am on August 9th 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 POW 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 screened at the Cork Film Festival last November to a sold-out crowd, prompting a second screening. Galway audiences will get a chance to see what the fuss was about on Thursday July 9th, at 12:15pm in the Town Hall Studio.