Japan hails the heroic 'Fukushima 50'

Japan hails the heroic 'Fukushima 50'

In Japanese disaster films they like heroes who sacrifice everything for the greater good - stoic, determined, refusing to back down in the face of adversity or even certain death.

These are the qualities the country admires.

Now the newspapers here have a new band of heroes to lionise - the workers, emergency services personnel and the scientists battling to save the Fukushima nuclear plant, their fellow citizens and themselves.

We know little about them, except for the few whose relatives have spoken to the Japanese media.

One woman told the papers her father, who had worked for an electric company for 40 years, had volunteered to help.