Masao Yoshida, RIP.

Masao Yoshida, the former plant manager of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, died today of esophageal cancer. He was 58.

Yoshida’s ignoring Tepco’s orders to stop seawater injection into the stricken reactors saved Tokyo, and the USA too (for now).

As radiation levels spiked in the early days of the crisis, workers were pulled out of the plant leaving behind what became known as the Fukushima Fifty who risked their lives to bring the reactors under control.

On March 12, a day after the tsunami, Yoshida ignored an order from Tepco headquarters to stop pumping seawater into a reactor to try and cool it because of concerns that ocean water would corrode the equipment…

Spain gave the Fukushima Fifty the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord in September 2011, calling them the “heroes of Fukushima.”

“He was such a born leader that his subordinates were ready to die alongside him,” said Ryusho Kadota, who interviewed Yoshida and other members of the Fifty for his book “The Man Who Stared Down Death.” “If Yoshida hadn’t been plant manager, Tokyo would be a no-man’s land right now.”(1)

The lying and genocidal corporation Tepco, which owns the Daiichi plant, has said that Yoshida’s esophageal cancer was not due to radiation exposure, because he “couldn’t” have developed it in the time frame since the earthquake. Of course they would say that… THE MURDERER DENIES THAT HE COMMITTED THE CRIME.

The photo taken around the time of Yoshida’s stepping down from his post in December 2011 shown two areas of swelling in the neck area. From this tweet:

The report also in the hoax death news director Yoshida in NHK. Lymph cancer of iodine exposure has occurred in the cervical vertebrae of Yoshida, you can see that you have transferred to the esophagus. It is a symptom of a complete “acute iodine exposure cancer”. Esophageal cancer if exposure, and they occur in one year in acute. Case of juvenile exposure and cancer, metastasis is usually in one year.(2)

Clearly the radioactive iodine had gotten to him, and metastasis had occurred. Also, he had been employed by Tepco since 1979, and he must have accumulated a significant dose since then.

From an interview with Yoshida conducted in July 2012,

“In a Buddhism text that I’ve been reading for a long time, there is a mention of divine figures issuing from the ground. That was what I felt was happening in the hellish situation at the plant. Workers would go to the scenes of the accident, then come back upstairs (at the Anti-Seismic Building), they were dead tired, without sleep, with not enough food, reaching the limit of their physical strength. Then they would go out again, and come back, and go out again. There were many workers like them. When I saw these workers, I knew I had to do whatever I could for them. It’s my belief that we have been able to restore the plant to the current level [of relative stability], because of these workers.”

The precise word Mr. Yoshida uses for “divine figure” is “Bodhisattva” – one who vows to save all beings before becoming a buddha.(3)

There is no doubt that Fukushima is hell on earth. After their realization of Noble Wisdom, and a heart full of compassion and love for all beings, transcendental bodies of bodhisattvas appear from the ground, in the form of the Fukushima 50. According to the Lankavatara Sutra:

Then Mahamati said to the Blessed One: You have spoken of an astral-body, a “mind-vision-body” (manomayakaya) which the Bodhisattvas are able to assume, as being one of the fruits of self-realisation of Noble Wisdom: pray tell us, Blessed One, what is meant by such transcendental body?…

The second kind of transcendental personality is the kind assumed by Bodhisattvas and Tathagatas as bodies of transformation by which they demonstrate their original vows in the work of achieving and perfecting; it comes with the eighth stage of Bodhisattvahood. When the Bodhisattva has a thorough-going penetration into the maya-like nature of things and understands the dharma of imagelessness, he will experience the “turning-about” in his deepest consciousness and will become able to experience the higher Samadhis even to the highest. By entering into these exalted Samadhis he attains a personality that transcends the conscious-mind, by reason of which he obtains supernatural powers of self-mastery and activities because of which he is able to move as he wishes, as quickly as a dream changes as quickly as an image changes in a mirror. This transcendental body is not a product of the elements and yet there is something in it that is analogous to what is so produced; it is furnished with all the differences appertaining to the world of form but without their limitations; possessed of this “mind-vision-body” he is able to be present in all the assemblages in all the Buddha-lands. Just as his thoughts move instantly and without hindrance over walls and rivers and trees and mountains, and just as in memory he recalls and visits the scenes of his past experiences, so, while his mind keeps functioning in the body, his thoughts may be a hundred thousand yojanas away. In the same fashion the transcendental personality that experiences the Samadhi Vajravimbopama will be endowed with supernatural powers and psychic faculties and self-mastery by reason of which he will be able to follow the noble paths that lead to the assemblages of the Buddhas, moving about as freely as he may wish. But his wishes will no longer be self-centered nor tainted by discrimination and attachment, for this transcendental personality is not his old body, but is the transcendental embodiment of his original vows of self-yielding in order to bring all beings to maturity.(4)

I’m not sure that this is the same sutra that Yoshida was referring to (more likely the Avatamsaka), but this would indicate the form of divine assistance he perceived, without which the radioactive contamination would have been much worse.

(1) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-09/former-fukushima-nuclear-plant-head-masao-yoshida-dies-of-cancer.html
(2) https://twitter.com/izimo_ssp/status/354528153005334528
(3) http://ex-skf.blogspot.com/2013/07/just-in-masao-yoshida-fukushima-i-nuke.html
(4) http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/resources/downloads/sutras/08technicalMayayana/Lankavatara_Sutra%20abridged.pdf

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