In Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic Seven Samurai, a group of seven ronin, or rogue samurai,
are brought together and recruited to save a village from invading bandits.
Nearly 60 years later, the Japanese town of Okuma was at the centre of not only an earthquake
and a tsunami, but also the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Just like the villagers in the movie, the town needed immediate protection and support
if they wanted to survive a horrific fate, and they found it in a disparate group of
engineers and emergency workers who, like the ronin, banded together to defend against
an even grea at.
Welcome to the epic, tragic, and heroic tale of the Fukushima 50 – The modern-day Nuclear
Samurai.
In case you haven't already watched our video breaking down the events of the Fukushima
Daiichi nuclear disaster, we'll start off with a brief recap.
It was by far one of the greatest nuclear disasters in history.
On Friday, 11 March 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake shook the sea floor off the coast
of Japan, roughly 43 miles or 70 km east of the Tōhoku region of Honshu, Japan's main
island.
The Tōhoku earthquake was the fourth strongest ever recorded- strong enough to shift the
coastline of Honshu island 8 feet (2.4 m) to the east, shift the Earth's axis by approximately
4-10 inches, and trigger tsunami waves that may have reached heights of up to 40 metres.
To the people on the ground, it seemed like the end of days, but things were about to
get so much worse.
Situated right in the path of the earthquake and resulting waves was the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear power plant, located in the town of Okuma, Fukushima prefecture.
While the plant was built to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis, the force of the
Tōhoku earthquake far exceeded the seismic tolerance of the reactors, and the plant's
6m sea wall was unable to stop the 13m wave that ended up hitting the plant during the
tsunami.
As a result, after the plant's main generators had been shut down in automatic response to
the earthquake, flooding meant that the backup generators were unable to start up and pick
up the slack.
This resulted in core meltdowns in Fukushima's first, second, and third reactors, as the
coolant systems in those reactors were no longer receiving the power they needed to
function.
The plant was in full nuclear meltdown.
Initially, the plant's parent company, TEPCO, proposed a complete withdrawal of all staff
from the plant, but this proposal was rejected by the Prime Minister, and TEPCO was instructed
to direct all of their manpower towards reconnecting the plant to the power grid and stopping any
further core meltdowns.
However, someone would have to stay inside the radioactive plant and continue to operate
it until repairs were made- or else there could be yet another nuclear meltdown.
Enter the Fukushima 50.
Despite the name, the actual number of people involved in the operation rotated frequently.
At one point, on 18 March, the number of team members rose to about 580.
Regardless of the real numbers, the media ran with the initial number of 50, using it
as a reflection of the solitary nature of the role.
The Fukushima 50 were a dedicated team comprised of plant workers, engineers from TEPCO subsidiaries
as well as companies like Hitachi and Toshiba, fire fighters from nearby cities, and soldiers
from the Japanese military.
Engineers and soldiers were tasked with clean up and equipment maintenance, while firefighters
were in charge of using seawater to manually cool the damaged reactors.
While many of the Fukushima 50 have remained anonymous, one Fukushima employee, Atsufumi
Yoshizawa, has come forward to tell his story in the years since, giving us a rare insight
into what it was like working on the plant in the months after the disaster.
Even more harrowing though is his experience on that fateful day, when one of the world’s
largest nuclear disasters unfolded right before his very eyes.
54-year-old Yoshizawa was just about to end his shift working as a nuclear engineer at
the Fukushima plant when the earthquake hit.
He recalls sheltering under a desk as soon as the tremors started, and being able to
see cars on the street outside bouncing up and down through a nearby window.
According to him, it was like no earthquake he'd ever felt before.
There were 6000 workers on site that day, and a third of them, including Yoshizawa,
were working in the restricted area nearest to the reactors.
When the quake hit, Yoshizawa's thoughts were not with his wife and daughters, who at the
time were safely living in the town of Yokohama, south of Tokyo, but with his co-workers, many
of whom had moved their families to Okuma and other towns closer to the plant.
Once the quakes subsided, Yoshizawa joined other senior staff members in an earthquake-proof
room to discuss next steps.
Everything looked fine despite the earthquake damage- until the tsunami hit.
Waves rocked the Fukushima plant, smashing into the seawalls and easily cresting them,
only to come crashing down onto the nuclear facility itself.
The building rocked once more, not with the power of the earth this time, but with the
power of an angry sea.
Shortly after the massive 13 meter waves hit the facility, Yoshiwaza and his group taking
refuge in an earthquake-proof room received dreadful news: the power to the cooling systems
of the mighty nuclear reactors had been knocked offline.
Even worse news- the backup generators had been flooded.
Even now, the cores of the nuclear reactors were beginning to melt down, and there was
no way to stop it.
Luckily, the two reactors under Yoshizawa's supervision were reactors 5 and 6, which had
avoided serious damage due to already having been put into cold shutdown for routine maintenance.
But Yoshizawa knew that the longer the power was off, the more likely it would be that
the fuel rods in those reactors would melt through containment like the rods in reactors
1, 2 and 3 had done.
For this reason, Yoshizawa volunteered to stay behind while the majority of the plant's
employees were evacuated.
Yoshizawa would sacrifice his life if necessary to save as many people as possible.
“I never thought of leaving.”
Yoshizawa said in an interview.
“We knew that we would not be replaced.
No one was forced to stay, but those of us who remained knew that we would be there until
the end.
We knew that we were the only people capable of saving the plant.”
Saving the plant proved an incredibly deadly and dangerous job for everyone involved.
Due to the amount of radiation as well as flood and earthquake damage, the workers who
volunteered to stay behind had to make a temporary home base in a two-story earthquake-resistant
building that had been constructed at the centre of the complex around a year earlier.
The combined amount of space for the workers was about the size of an average living room,
and the workers needed to sleep in shifts to ensure that the plant could be maintained
24 hours a day.
On 28 March, an article was published in a Japanese newspaper that detailed a sample
routine of the Fukushima 50, giving us a clear idea of what it was like to live and work
in the destroyed plant.
If you were one of the Fukushima 50, you would be expected to wake up every day at 6 AM,
before attending a meeting that lasted from 7 until 8.
Between 8 and 10, you would receive breakfast rations that consisted of 30 cookies and a
bottle of vegetable juice.
Then, at 10 AM you would be sent down to the reactor to begin your maintenance tasks.
You wouldn't be given another break until 5 PM, when you would receive canned food and
pre-packed boiled rice for dinner.
Then, from 8 until 10, there would be another meeting, after which you would retire to your
blanket on the floor and let the night shift workers get on with their own schedule.
It sounds like a gruelling experience, and makes even the worst overnight school trips
look like a walk in the park.
But, as Yoshizawa said, nobody was thinking about leaving or slacking off, because they
knew that if they left the plant unattended, it would spell certain doom for thousands
of people in the surrounding areas.
But despite most of the hazards having been contained, the plant was still a deadly place
to work, and a fresh nuclear disaster was only one accident away.
As the workers tried to mitigate the damage in the days that followed, the hydrogen gas
being released by overheating zirconium cladding in the reactor cores mixed with oxygen seeping
in from the outside, a combination that would lead to a series of hydrogen explosions.
Reactor 4, which hadn't been damaged in the initial quake, was partially collapsed as
a result of the hydrogen explosion in reactor 3.
In total, 16 people were injured in the explosions.
During this period, Yoshizawa had been briefly relocated to a disaster response centre about
5 km away from the plant.
However, once the explosions started, Yoshizawa and the other Tepco employees who had been
relocated knew that they had no choice but to return to Fukushima.
Had the reactors been breached?
Was the site deadly radioactive now?
There was no way to know, and yet the Fukushima 50 had a job to do.
Shortly after the explosions, the number of emergency personnel stationed in and around
the plant had increased dramatically and as the Tepco employees made their way back to
the plant, they were given a hero’s welcome and saluted by lines of soldiers who had also
been brought in to support the disaster relief effort.
Adding to the danger of the situation was the fact that the team quickly started to
run low on supplies.
Both food reserves and stores of protective equipment had been severely damaged by the
tsunami, and with the army and fire service fully occupied with both assisting in plant
maintenance and searching for survivors from the earthquake, supply runs in and out of
the area were few and far between.
And if that wasn't bad enough, some of the food that they did have that hadn't been irradiated
or destroyed by the concurrent natural disasters was inedible due to lack of either clean water
or power to cook with.
Each worker at the plant was given a 500 mL bottle of clean drinking water that they were
only given a chance to refill every two days, so a pot of instant noodles or even a cup
of hot coffee was completely out of the question.
It wasn't until December of 2011 that power was restored to the plant, enabling all of
the reactors to stabilise and enter cold shutdown.
Only then were working conditions at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant able to return to anything
resembling normal.
Unlike the Chernobyl Suicide Squad, who we've talked about before, we don't know the names
of most of the so-called Fukushima 50.
Tepco rejects most requests for interviews and most of the information we have about
them comes from anonymous sources.
You might be curious why these people refuse to take credit for saving Japan from an even
worse nuclear disaster.
Perhaps it was out of a sense of… shame.
Shortly after the disaster at Fukushima happened, reports surfaced that proposals to increase
the height of the plant's sea wall had been repeatedly rejected by the Tepco higher-ups,
once in 2000 and then again in 2008.
The entire disaster could have been avoided, or at least greatly minimized- except for
the greed of Tepco executives who didn’t want to pay for a higher sea wall.
In 2012, the government-appointed Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation
Commission declared the accident to have been manmade, and a direct result of poor safety
assessment on the part of Tepco.
The Fukushima disaster is viewed by many Japanese people as something that could have been completely
prevented, and because of that, there's a lot of resentment towards Tepco among the
general population.
As a result of this, many who were working at Fukushima at the time want to distance
themselves as much as they can from the company that, as far as a lot of people are concerned,
is directly responsible for the second largest nuclear disaster in human history.
Many of the Fukushima 50, even those who were never Tepco employees in the first place,
fear that going public about their involvement with the plant will hurt their personal reputations.
But, regardless of who caused the disaster in the first place, without the Fukushima
50, it could have been so much worse.
While the death toll of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami is believed to be as high as 20,000,
the number of deaths associated with the plant disaster is only estimated at around 1,368.
The vast majority of those deaths can be chalked up to poor handling of the evacuation process,
especially in regards to moving elderly and sick residents away from irradiated hospitals
and care homes.
Despite the fact that Fukushima is listed as a class 7 nuclear disaster, the highest
rating that can be given, the World Health Organisation reported in 2013 that the amounts
of radiation released into the atmosphere were only a tenth those of Chernobyl, and
so far there have been negligible health effects on the Japanese population that were directly
caused by radiation exposure, although most of the Fukushima plant workers are now at
a higher risk of developing cancer later in life.
That risk is much higher for the Fukushima 50, and one worker involved in plant maintenance
after the disaster did die of radiation-induced lung cancer in 2018.
Although these are grim numbers, this is a far better outcome than what could have been.
Had the government approved Tepco's initial proposal to abandon the Fukushima plant completely
as soon as the first reactor meltdown occurred, the amount of radiation released from the
plant would have been devastating.
On top of the number of people displaced by the tsunami and earthquake, the entire north
half of Honshu island would have to be evacuated, and the radiation potentially could've spread
as far south as Tokyo.
As we probably don't need to tell you, relocating that many people in a nation of 130 million
– where there were only about 14,000 square miles of land to work with before half of
it got irradiated – would be no easy task.
This is to say nothing of the death toll, which would have been much higher if the radiation
levels had increased.
Surprisingly, though the town of Okuma is still uninhabitable, the Fukushima plant is
still running.
There are no clear plans to decommission the plant, and management estimates that the process
would take around 30 to 40 years.
Although we don't know most of their names, and there were a lot more than 50 of them,
the Fukushima 50 have become a powerful international symbol in the years since the accident.
Like the legendary ronin of the middle ages, some people laud the Fukushima 50 as heroes
for their sacrifice, while others still see them as villains because of their complicity
in Tepco's negligent safety practices.
But regardless of how the public views them, there's no doubt that the Fukushima 50 saved
Japan from what could've been a truly apocalyptic nuclear disaster.
And much like Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, those who spent 2011 working tirelessly to restore
order in the nuclear chaos have formed a unique bond through their ordeal.
Looking back on the experience, Yoshizawa likens the camaraderie of the Fukushima 50
to that of soldiers during wartime, saying simply “The enemy was a nuclear power plant.
And we fought it together.”
Now go watch 'How Fukushima Disaster Actually Happened.'
Or, if you want to learn about another group of nuclear heroes, check out 'Chernobyl Suicide
Squad- 3 Men Who Prevented Even Worse Nuclear Disaster.'