was born in

Osaka, Japan is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 ...

and was a General Manager in the Nuclear Asset Management Department of the Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. (TEPCO),

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

. He was the plant manager during the

Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster The was a nuclear accident in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Ōkuma, Fukushima, Japan. The proximate cause of the disaster was the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on the afternoon of 11 March 2011 ...

, where he played a critical role by disobeying corporate headquarters orders to stop using seawater to cool the reactors. According to nuclear physicist Dr.

Michio Kaku Michio Kaku (, ; born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science ( science communicator). He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kak ...

, the decision to use seawater arguably prevented a much greater disaster. Without the last ditch effort to use seawater to cool the reactor, a much greater catastrophe that could have contaminated much of northern Japan may have occurred. Yoshida managed to gain the trust of Prime Minister

Naoto Kan is a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from June 2010 to September 2011. Kan was the first Prime Minister since the resignation of Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 to serve for m ...

, whom he met the day after the tsunami on a plant tour. They had both attended the

Tokyo Institute of Technology is a national research university located in Greater Tokyo Area, Japan. Tokyo Tech is the largest institution for higher education in Japan dedicated to science and technology, one of first five Designated National University and selected as ...

. On 12 March 2011, about 28 hours after the tsunami struck, Yoshida and other TEPCO executives had ordered workers to start injecting seawater into Reactor No. 1 to keep the reactor from overheating and going into meltdown. But 21 minutes later, they ordered Yoshida to suspend the operation. Yoshida chose to ignore the order and ordered the plant workers to continue. At 20:05 JST that night, the Japanese government again ordered

seawater Seawater, or salt water, is water from a sea or ocean. On average, seawater in the world's oceans has a salinity of about 3.5% (35 g/L, 35 ppt, 600 mM). This means that every kilogram (roughly one liter by volume) of seawater has appro ...

to be injected into Unit 1. The week of 7 June 2011, TEPCO gave Yoshida a verbal reprimand for defying the order and not reporting it earlier. Yoshida was diagnosed with

esophageal cancer Esophageal cancer is cancer arising from the esophagus—the food pipe that runs between the throat and the stomach. Symptoms often include difficulty in swallowing and weight loss. Other symptoms may include pain when swallowing, a hoarse voi ...

, which was determined by TEPCO to be unrelated to the nuclear accident, due to the rapidness of its onset. He retired as plant manager in early December 2012. He underwent an operation for the cancer and later suffered a non-fatal

stroke A stroke is a disease, medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemorr ...

. Yoshida died on 9 July 2013. He was 58 and is survived by his wife, Yoko, and three sons. "If Yoshida wasn’t there, the disaster could have been much worse”, said Reiko Hachisuka, head of a business group in Okuma town. Former Prime Minister

tweeted Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

a tribute, “I bow in respect for his leadership and decision-making".

References

External links

''Mainichi'' article

Fukushima Nuclear Plant Manager Praised For Heroic Decisions During Meltdown Dies Of Cancer
1955 births 2013 deaths Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster Deaths from esophageal cancer Japanese nuclear engineers People from Osaka {{japan-engineer-stub

See also

References

External links