Students should stop to reflect on workers' self-sacrifice for international community
We are all, I’m sure, familiar with the ongoing events of the Fukushima nuclear plant and the scare that has been occurring throughout Japan and beyond as a result of the recent earthquake.
As someone who tries to stay updated on the events of the world, I read the news fairly frequently to stay in the know. But a few days ago, as I was skimming through the headlines, I came across something that struck a little closer to home.
After these weeks of tirelessly trying to fix the nuclear plant to prevent a disastrous meltdown, the “Fukushima 50” — the workers who have been involved since the beginning of this incident — all expect to die soon from radiation poisoning or from cancer in the years to come. They’ve not only calmly accepted their fates, but they’re also willing to continue in order to save their country. Many of these workers are still fairly young.
In a world of fast-paced media where news changes more frequently than our socks, it is easy for us as spectators to lose perspective. I don’t mean this in an accusatory way — it’s just a fact of life. When oceans and continents lie between us and the main action, it is easy for us to become disconnected, to retreat into our zones of comfort where we know very little of the pain and suffering that occurs abroad. Sometimes the news to us almost seems surreal, as if it were nothing but a horror film, something that engages us temporarily before we quickly shake it off and return to our ordinary lives.
There may not be much we can do as students hundreds of miles away, but we should all take a moment to reflect. A nuclear meltdown in Japan would affect us, as well as rest of the world, in significant ways. Those workers who are dying in Japan are indirectly dying for us, too.
And for that, we owe them our gratitude.