An inscription on the handle of a ceremonial sword given by 2nd Lieutenant Isao Kusuno to Dr Aidan MacCarthy  from Castletownbere in west Cork.

Dr McCarthy was captured in Java during the Second World War, the Cork man endured four years as a POW in Nagasaki, and then survived the atomic bomb that wiped out the city on August 9th, 1945.  During his period as a POW, Dr MacCarthy was forced to build a concrete bomb shelter. When the atomic bomb was dropped on the city at 11:02, MacCarthy and his guards took refuge in the shelter – just one mile from the epicentre of the explosion. Emerging later on, amid the rain of ashes and total devastation, Nagasaki was no more.

The soldiers were moved on to a camp outside the rubble and desolation of the city, to CampFukuoka 26 near Keisen.

It was there that Dr MacCarthy learned that Japan had surrendered, the war had ended and that he and his fellow POWs were free. The soldiers had intended to kill their guard, 2nd Lieutenant Isao Kusuno, but MacCarthy locked him into a shed, saving his life.

Kusono presented the Irishman with his ceremonial sword, an ancestral relic passed down through the family, along with a photograph inscribed with the words above.