And Then A Hero Comes Along…250 Heroes, To Be Precise

Image by The Official CTBTO Photostream via Flickr

I read the following story over on Cubik’s Rube.  He and I agree on very little – so little, in fact, that he hardly ever bothers to answer my rare comments on his posts.  I assume he feels, like I do, that we’d both be wasting our time.  But this case is different: we both agree that Japan’s senior citizens are incredible.

A group called the Skilled Veterans Corps are working to fix the problems at Fukushima.  From CNN:

…three retirees sit in a cramped room, hunched over their computers and mobile phones. They look like the planning committee for a neighborhood senior breakfast, not the leaders of a 250-member team attempting to defuse one of the worst nuclear meltdowns in history.

But that’s exactly what 72-year-old Yasuteru Yamada hopes his seniors group, the Skilled Veterans Corps, will do: help end the crisis at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

The group, consisting only of retirees age 60 and up, says it is uniquely poised to work at the radiation-contaminated plant, as the cells of an older person’s body divide more slowly than a younger individual.

This post is short because there are no words to express how much admiration I feel at their selflessness.

Related articles

• Japan: League of elder heroes volunteer to clean up Fukushima, instead of young folks (boingboing.net)
• Japanese seniors volunteer for Fukushima ‘suicide corps’ (cnn.com)
• Japanese seniors volunteer for “suicide corps” (macleans.ca)
• BAMFs of the Day (thedailywh.at)
• Japanese seniors volunteer to go into nuclear ‘danger zone’ (theglobeandmail.com)
• Japanese seniors volunteer to go into nuclear ‘danger zone’ – Globe and Mail (news.google.com)
• Retirees Volunteer for Fukushima Duty (abcnews.go.com)
• Japan Nuclear Crisis: Retirees Volunteer for Fukushima Duty – ABC News (news.google.com)
• To Clean Up Fukushima, Japan’s Elderly Propose the Ultimate Sacrifice (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
• A group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners are volunteering to tackle the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima power station.By Roland Buerk (theboldcorsicanflame.wordpress.com)