Another Encounter with History for Tina....

In 1981 I was Harbour Master in Castletownbere in West Cork, Ireland. This is where Tina had another encounter with a major event in history. Yesterday was the 66th anniversary of the Allied Victory in Japan, VJ Day, and we recalled how that happened.
We were all very busy, I had a burgeoning port to operate supporting the needs of the Irish Fishing industry, I was also teaching navigation at the college. Tina was a very busy person too, we had Velia just starting school, Gerard starting his working career, we had Spanish officials to entertain, she started a shipping agency, all those kind of things. But for all that Tina was most annoyed that everything in this remote Irish port and community did everything for men and boys but nothing, absolutely nothing, for girls. Tina saw this as a challenge and decided to do something. She gained the support of two like minded women including a fine young woman, Adrienne MacCarthy. Unbeknownst to Tina, this young woman was the daughter of Air Commodore Aidan MacCarthy. Here is a short summary of his story :

"Dr. Aidan MacCarthy [1914 – 1992] served in the RAF and reached the rank of Air Commodore. He was awarded the George Medal for rescuing the crew of a crashed burning aircraft. He was at Dunkirk where he attended wounded Allied soldiers while under fire from German aircraft.

He was later captured by the Japanese in Sumatra and thence taken to Japan.

He was in charge of a working party in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped on that city on August 9, 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, before Gen. MacArthur and his party arrived in Tokyo Bay several days after the end of the war."

This was a great surprise to Tina and I , he was such a nice quiet person, I met him a couple of times but Tina was involved with Adrienne so saw much more of this truly remarkable man.

As you can see from the press cutting within this blog Tina was successful and they launched the Brownies in Castletownbere, she cocked a snoot at the Catholic Church too by making it inter-denominational . This was another brush with history for Tina and indeed we have the book and sometimes reflect on this - we must not forget.





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