I was reading
this LA Times article about a retired Japanese scientist and his fellow retirees who are willing and eager to continue giving back to help clean up at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and it puts a little lump in my throat to read about their spirit of service and self-sacrifice.
Tom Brokaw lauds the Greatest Generation in America, but these retirees are part of the same generation in Japan that rebuilt their own country literally from ashes into a world superpower again. It really was a different mindset to that Japanese generation that were promised lifetime employment but in return, gave their all for their companies and their country, compared to us today, where most of us are just scrambling to look out for numero uno because we never know where the ax will fall next.
The founder had a mission after the nuclear disaster:
Their point is well-reasoned: Why subject young, mostly unskilled workers to the long-term perils of working around deadly radioactivity when there are older people with training who probably will be dead long before the adverse health effects -- including cancer -- come to pass?
Many are trained scientists and engineers but I doubt if much of their expertise is directly applicable to this situation. But they all are willing to put their bodies to work in those dangerous, radioactive environments. I'm not sure how it is in the US, but the dirty little secret at Fukushima Daiichi is that only a portion of the workers onsite are actually TEPCO employees. Most are contract workers, not paid all that well, with only minimal training to working in such hazardous environments. It's unclear how many of the "Fukushima 50" that were lauded as modern day samurai in the days after the earthquake and tsunami for their bravery, and who generated good will for TEPCO, were actually contract workers.
Anyway, TEPCO is not receptive to their offer to help. But it's good to see folks that society see's as "over the hill" trying to continue to give back.
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