Fukushima and Japan's Suicide Culture

[MA-Caver]

Japanese retirees ready to risk Fukushima front line
By Kevin Krolicki – Mon Jun 6, 5:29 am ET
TOKYO (Reuters) – At age 72, Yasuteru Yamada believes he has a few more good years ahead.
But not so many that the retired engineer is worried about the consequences of working on the hazardous front line cleaning up the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant.
"I will be dead before cancer gets me," said Yamada, who has organized an unlikely band of more than 270 retirees and older workers eager to work for nothing but the sense of service at the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Yamada, who spent 28 years at Sumitomo Metal Industries, says the Fukushima clean-up job is too sprawling, too complex and too important to be left to Tokyo Electric Power, the Fukushima plant's embattled utility operator.
Instead, he wants to see the Japanese government take over at Fukushima with his group of graying volunteers with expertise in civil engineering and construction stepping in on an unpaid basis, "like the Red Cross."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110606/wl_nm/us_japan_fukushima_retireees

Brave men willing to risk their lives to help their country and country men. Not only soldiers can make this type of sacrifice. Ready to die if the need calls for it. An honorable death. An honorable suicide.
Throughout history this culture has used suicide as a honorable thing to do. From the earliest Samurai's (i.e. 47 Ronin) to Kamikazes to these men.
While the men have no lost honor to regain they're still willing to put themselves to death (because not even the best radiation suit will keep it all out for long and the jobs necessary ahead are not going to be done for brief periods. So they know that it's a suicide mission that they will die and not pleasantly.

 

[Sensei Payne]

The sad thing about this is...

Someone HAS to do it.

 

[MA-Caver]

The sad thing about this is...

Someone HAS to do it.

Yes I understand that and respect and honor these men (retirees) who are willing to sacrifice their lives for their fellow country men to keep it safe to contain the radiation and so on. The fact that they're willing to do so without question brings to (my) mind of the mentality that the Japanese have about self-termination or suicide. Almost as if it's not such a weighty decision. A fact of life, part of life, part of their culture which dates back centuries.
I know there are many other countries who have stories of self-sacrificing groups doing for the greater good... but it's not part of their culture, not part of their mentality. Just something that needs to be done. I'm sure there are a number of deaths related to the containment of Chernobyl and likewise with 3 Mile Island. But those are isolated incidents.

Fighting and dying for your country in times of war is not suicidal. But as history shows with examples of Kamikaze pilots and charges by the Japanese in WWII likewise with the self slaughter at Iwo Jima and other islands that fell to advancing allied troops where citizens (non-combatants) jumped off of cliffs with their entire families... then the Samurai culture throughout the centuries.
Not saying it's wrong it's a source of fascination with me because no other country or culture that I've seen/studied actually does this on a regular basis. These men are the most recent example. Now is their attitude/mentality related to honorable suicide ... prolly not. Just something that they're willing to do though they know they won't survive because it's for the greater good.
We're talking about 270 men all willing to put their life down. That is simply (to me at least) amazing. I'm sure that all of them had hoped to live to die of natural causes but this crisis comes up, well.

 

[Tez3]

Perhaps though it's also about old people still being useful and valued for who and what they are. In Western culture all too often being old is a misery, being put in homes and treated as past their sell by date. The Japanese value their old people, let them make decision for themselves so that they can be treated as the adults they are rather than old 'children'. These people will die sooner rather than later but they will die knowing they have useful lives and not been consigned to the scrap heap. How would you rather go, doing something useful or sitting in a chair you've sat in for 12 hours a day in some old peoples home being patronised by the carers?

 

[MA-Caver]

Perhaps though it's also about old people still being useful and valued for who and what they are. In Western culture all too often being old is a misery, being put in homes and treated as past their sell by date. The Japanese value their old people, let them make decision for themselves so that they can be treated as the adults they are rather than old 'children'. These people will die sooner rather than later but they will die knowing they have useful lives and not been consigned to the scrap heap. How would you rather go, doing something useful or sitting in a chair you've sat in for 12 hours a day in some old peoples home being patronized by the carers?

Agreed and it's most likely that the (Japanese) government will allow it for the said reason I mentioned above. They're not afraid or abhorrent to the idea of suicide. Again, I honor those men who stepped up and said let us be useful just one last time.
Our respective governments would likely say "absolutely not!" because of our abhorrence to the idea of suicide. It's simply not in our mind-set.

 

[Big Don]

I don't know that I would call selflessly giving your life to save the lives of others suicide. I know I would call it noble.