http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20707753In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the foreign media, including the BBC, hailed the men as the "Fukushima 50".
In fact there were never 50 of them. Hundreds of workers stayed at the plant, braving high levels of radiation to bring the reactors under control. Many are still there today.
And yet almost nothing has been heard from them. No awards, no newspaper articles or TV interviews. We don't even know their names.
. . .
Back in the 1960s and 70s, getting rural Japanese communities to accept nuclear power plants was hard.
They were promised new roads and sports facilities. They were promised high paying jobs in the plant. And most of all, they were promised that nuclear power was completely safe.
Now that the lie has been so tragically exposed, the feeling of betrayal is huge.
Before the meltdowns, Seiko Takahashi never thought of activism. Now the middle-aged mother from Fukushima City is a passionate anti-nuclear campaigner. And she admits there is little sympathy for the Fukushima workers.
"They are not heroes for us," she says. "I feel sorry for them, but I don't see them as heroes. We see them as one block, they work for Tepco, they earned high salaries. The company made a lot of money from nuclear power, and that's what paid for their nice lives."
Wow! I can't believe it. Is this how divisive and cynical our world has become? I thought the Fukushima workers who stayed to get the reactor under control were up there with Father Kolbe of Auschwitz in terms of being heroes and sacrificing their lives for others. Then I happened across this article recently which has sort of sent chills down my spine. How can the Fukushima workers be held in any way responsible for the tragedy? Is it a sign of ingratitude? Or were they negligent in some way? Meanwhile many of us who make much more miniscule sacrifices are basking away (in relative terms) in anonymity and public indifference. What is wrong with this world?
PS. Regarding Father Kolbe, I was chatting with someone in another forum who said Father Kolbe was an "idiot" for willingly "throwing his life away" and not fighting tooth and nail against the Germans and that because of the passivity of people like him, more soldiers allegedly had to die fighting the Germans which he refused to.
Maybe we should call our present age the "twilight of Angels". No one is sacred, not even someone who would forfeit their life to save the rest of us.