Here at Gentleman’s Journal we believe that bravery is not the absence of fear but triumph over it, so today take a look at acts of bravery performed by men all across the world.
Yasuteru Yamada and his Volunteers
After the Fukushima Disaster in 2010, there was a massive amount of containment and clean up to be done. Young men were doused in radiation day after day which made Yamada, 72, who was a cancer survivor and former engineer very sad. He set up Skilled Veteran Corps, a force of elder Japanese volunteers to take place of the young. He gathered 400 volunteers and argued that since cancer due to radiation takes 20-30 years to develop, the volunteers who probably just had 12-13 years to live, would have lesser chances of developing cancer.
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Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki was an Austrian who purposely got himself incarcerated in Auschwitz, the infamous German concentration camp, during WWII in order to gather evidence of the humanitarian crimes and mass genocide being committed by the Nazis. He was there for two years, passing on intelligence to the Allies that the Germans were not running typical prisons. He played an important part in communicating the urgent need to liberate these prisoners and broke out of Auschwitz in 1943. Despite being a war hero, he was executed in 1948 by the Soviets for his loyalty to then exiled government of Poland.
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John Rabe
John Rabe was a Nazi Businessman is China who was directly responsible for saving 200,000-250,000 lives during the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese Imperial Forces. Hundreds of Thousands of Chinese were raped, tortured and murdered by the Japanese Army and while most western missionaries fled, Rabe stayed back and helped organize the defense of the city. He allowed the Chinese to stay at his properties and opened up foreign embassies and the University to them as shelter. This became known as the Nanking Safety Zone to provide shelter and protect the Chinese. The Japanese respected this safe zone as Japanese-German relations were growing during this period and they could not afford to upset the Germans.
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Jacklyn H Lucas
American solider Jack Lucas was patrolling a ravine on a Japanese island when the Japanese attacked and threw grenades at him. In order to protect his platoon, he jumped over a grenade and grabbed another one that fell nearby and laid it under him. Amazingly, he survived the explosion and underwent 26 major surgeries and had 250 pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body for the rest of his life.
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Mangal Pandey
An Indian soldier who played a key part in events immediately preceding the outbreak of the Indian rebellion of 1857. He was a sepoy (sipahi) in the 34th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) regiment of the British East India Company. While contemporary British opinion denounced him as a traitor and mutineer, Pandey is widely regarded as a hero in modern India. In 1984, the Indian government issued a postage stamp to commemorate him. His life and actions have also been portrayed in several cinematic productions, to know more about his more click here
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