"From the terrible depths of a natural disaster came an unexpected example of human bravery. On March 11, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck Japan, triggering a tsunami that cut a massive swath of destruction through farmlands, erased entire towns in its path, and mowed down thousands of human lives. It may be months, even years before the world knows exactly how many lives have been lost and how much damage has been caused—we just know the figures will be mind-boggling when they come.
And things could still grow worse. After the savagery wrought by the earthquake and the resulting tsunami came the unthinkable news that a nuclear power plant, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, located some 200 kilometers from Tokyo, had been crippled by catastrophic failures in its safety features and had been rocked by fires and explosions after its cooling system broke down, and was on the verge of a meltdown.
As a result, the Japanese government evacuated thousands of people from the surrounding area even as plant operator Tokyo Electric similarly evacuated some 700 workers from the stricken power plant. The world looked on in rising apprehension as the plant teetered on the edge of nuclear disaster. But somehow, someway, efforts to contain the disaster continue—at an extraordinary cost. A small group of workers, numbering anything from 50 to 180, remains onsite. There are no names or faces available, but they have been branded “The Fukushima 50” by the media, and the world is only just learning of their amazing sacrifice.
Composed of engineers and technicians, the Fukushima 50 are the frontliners in the struggle to keep the radiation leak from the nuclear power plant from becoming a deadly threat to its surrounding areas and other parts of the world, even as the radiation levels around them have risen to frightening levels. Notably, a number of them had elected to stay as volunteers. Some reports have identified one of them as a man who is set to retire in six months. A good number of them have been at the plant for over a week now and continue to stay there despite some of their comrades reportedly having been burned in fires or gone missing.
Due to the escalating radiation levels, the Fukushima 50 take turns in their version of hell. Equipped with respirators, jump suits and a flashlight as their only light source, the workers can only spend a few minutes in the most heavily irradiated parts of the plant, thus rotating the risk among themselves. Yet more is being asked from them. In order to keep them working at the plant within the bounds of law, the Japanese government raised the amount of radioactivity a Japanese worker may be exposed to—from 100 millisieverts to 250 millisieverts. The limit cannot be raised any higher. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” Japan’s Health Minister Yoko Komiyama told reporters.
As the drama in Fukushima unfolds, people around the world watch with fear, muttering the name of Chernobyl, the nuclear plant in the Ukraine that in 1986 became the worst nuclear plant accident of all time, killing thousands and rendering its immediate surroundings a radioactive wasteland. Fukushima Daiichi, they fear, might follow Chernobyl’s fate.
It might be years before we really get to know what happened within Fukushima Daiichi’s pitch-black corridors. But we already know the debt the world owes the Fukushima 50. It’s a vital, admirable part of Japanese character, some have said, this willingness to do what is necessary despite the danger, this stoic sacrifice for the greater good.
It is more than that. To stay when others have left, to step into the fire even as the flames burn white-hot, to stand strong amid the uncertainty of both nature and nuclear failure—all this takes more than just character.
The Fukushima 50 are on a mission from which, they know only fully well, they may not be able to return whole, if at all alive. And the world may never be able to truly honor their self-sacrifice."
GOD BLESS THE FUKUSHIMA 50 ):
