{"id":2316,"date":"2011-09-14T21:06:46","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T02:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2316"},"modified":"2011-09-14T21:08:23","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T02:08:23","slug":"nuclear-kamikaze-geezers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=2316","title":{"rendered":"Nuclear Kamikaze Geezers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I heard a report on NPR the other day about the band of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/09\/12\/140402430\/japanese-seniors-send-us-to-damaged-nuclear-plant\" target=\"_blank\">elderly Japanese people who are volunteering<\/a> to do work at the Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down, in place of younger people whose lives might be shortened by the high levels of radiation there.  The government and the utility company have not taken them up on this yet, but they might.  <\/p>\n<p>Wow, the Kamikaze spirit lives on in Japan!  At least amidst the older generation, those who grew up during WW2 or not long after.  This is quite an honorable thing, the notion of older people willing to cut short whatever years they have left, so as to keep younger people from losing a decade or two due to radiation-induced cancer.  <\/p>\n<p>Practically speaking, these old codgers are going to suffer if Tokyo Electric sends them out to nuclear hot spots <!--more-->in order to turn a valve or whatnot.  Old people have weaker immune systems, which will be further compromised by the radiation exposure.  They will drop pretty quickly from cancer and infection. <\/p>\n<p>But, that&#8217;s what the &#8220;divine wind&#8221; spirit is all about.  Life is a one-way mission anyway, and in the end, the only thing that matters is honor.  A suicide mission for the greater good of the homeland seems a sure way to garner some honor.  At least by old-school Japanese thinking.   <\/p>\n<p>Most interesting.  I can&#8217;t say that I would agree with it, can&#8217;t say that I&#8217;m ready to sign up for a job at Fukushima (although I could almost qualify, being close to 60 myself).  But being a half-ass Zen student, I must take my hat off to these people of the wind of honor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I heard a report on NPR the other day about the band of elderly Japanese people who are volunteering to do work at the Fukushima nuclear plant melt-down, in place of younger people whose lives might be shortened by the high levels of radiation there. The government and the utility company have not taken them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2316"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2318,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2316\/revisions\/2318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}