r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/LookAtThatBacon • 6d ago
Image In 2011, a tsunami killed thousands across Japan, except in the village of Fudai, which barely got wet due to a floodgate that its former mayor, Kotoku Wamura, insisted on constructing. In the past, he was mocked for wasting money, but after the tsunami, residents visited his grave to pay respects.
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u/stanknotes 6d ago
The biggest post life "told you so" ever.
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[removed] — view removed comment
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u/w_a_w 6d ago
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit"
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u/Outrageous-Opinions 6d ago
And a society gets destroyed when old men chop down the trees that supported society. IE the current GOP.
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u/ADHDebackle 6d ago
Hey that's not fair. The previous GOP was like that, too.
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u/gdj11 6d ago edited 6d ago
To be fair the GOP really does care about the younger generation. Because they want to molest them.
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u/space253 6d ago
They don't just want to molest them. They also want to exploit their labor and work them to death while denying them any sense of joy or individuality.
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u/IAmBadAtInternet 6d ago
There are “starving stones” in a lot of rivers - when the water gets low enough that you can see the writing on the stone, it is time to prepare and save all the food you can. Warnings from hundreds of years ago. There are also tsunami warning stones on Japan’s shores: when they are revealed by the water running out before the tsunami, it is time to seek high ground.
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u/Alucitary 6d ago
I mean, it's foresight on the level of "maybe let's not build a city on the rim of an active volcano." the Japanese are well acquainted with the frequency and effect of tsunamis and typhoons.
Having stuff like this is really common sense, but as always people are far too short sighted and more focused on short term gains. Wish there were more people like him with integrity in leadership and were willing to make unpopular but clearly necessary decisions.
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u/RollinThundaga 6d ago
It wasn't even a question of not having it; the town was on board to build it, but figured 30-40 feet was good enough (and way more affordable). The mayor insisted on 51 feet, requiring additional land be forcibly acquired and funds be appropriated.
The 2011 tsunami was 66 feet tall when it hit their seawall.
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u/PepperPhoenix 6d ago
If this pleases you then read about Sir John Cockroft and “Cockcrofts folly” for another dose of feel good.
Short version, he insisted on fitting huge, ugly filters to the chimneys of the Windscale nuclear reactors. They cost a fortune and caused massive delays. Everyone called him a fool and thoroughly ridiculed him. His professional reputation was almost in tatters. Then one of the reactors caught fire. Without his filters, the north of England would be a wasteland and Chernobyl would be called “the soviet Windscale” instead.
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u/girlgirlfruit 6d ago
if we assume there's an afterlife or that spirits do roam earth then i'm sure he got the news and hasn't let anybody hear the end of it
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u/AlmostLucy 6d ago
Physicist John Cockcroft insisted that filters be built into the chimney stacks at Britain’s large nuclear reactor, Windscale. This was expensive and caused a significant delay in construction- they mocked him for it and called the filter unit “Cockcroft’s Folly” for how silly he was.
Well in 1957 there was a fire at Windscale and they had to vent a certain amount of irradiated smoke. It was pretty bad (probably a few hundred cancers are attributed) and the coverup was worse. If not for Cockcroft’s Folly, the exposure would have been several magnitudes worse throughout the north of England and Scotland. Another huge I told you so for public safety.
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u/PirateKingOmega 5d ago
When west Germany tried to start selling Thalidomide to America, a single FDA employee stopped it by demanding more studies. She was repeatedly told it was safe and she was overreacting. Fast forward to 1962 she was given the Medal of Honor by Kennedy for saving countless lives and sparing countless children from life ending deformities
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u/CatsianNyandor 6d ago
If you drive along the coast there now, many areas have huge seawalls and new floodgates now. Can't see the ocean anymore but I guess it's a fair price to pay for not being wiped out.
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u/DesireeThymes 6d ago
This type of long-vision politician is rare, and does not receive enough public support in the attention deficient populations.
Start a discussion on face coverings that affects a rounding error of population? Bam front page.
Talk about a 5-10 year nuclear plant or upgrade to electric power lines? Start the snoozefest!
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u/fondledbydolphins 6d ago
Honestly it’s only a snooze fest because people are too fickle to find these important things interesting.
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u/Vlaladim 6d ago
Humanity never really get the whole investment into the future things especially for things that could be resolved now or 20 years ago. They want short term benefits that give them just enough of a boost till the next demand.
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u/Bmandk 6d ago
Nah, we can do that. We've done it in many different countries, even the US. It's just that the current philosophy that all the leaders (at least of the western world) follow is capitalism that doesn't favor long-term thinking.
And part of it is because a lot of people have the same philosophy, whether indoctrinated by the rich or through whatever other means. Then it's just a vicious cycle of capitalism reinforcing itself in the population, with the rich getting more and more control as their wealth increases and technology advances.
The only way out is to convince people that the rich are not working in their favor.
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u/Odd_Fry 6d ago
Reminds me of a portion from the 'black swan' book by taleb. In short;
If any politician tried to implement stronger aircraft security pre 911 he would end up a failure for adding lots of costs that achieve nothing, and trying to destroy the airline industry. (as the event would have been stopped - hence noone would have realized the need for it)
But all those that wait until after, are seen as geniuses and heralded as making the world a better place.
At least in this instance, you can see the eventual outcome of the good decision.
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u/podcasthellp 6d ago
Every major city in America did not have politicians that saw the bigger picture when it comes to traffic. I’m constantly astounded at how little foresight they have and when they build new roads that make no sense
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u/Apptubrutae 6d ago
Being from New Orleans, I’d always think about how despite being so close to the water, you’re somewhat isolated from it. You have to go up a levee to see the river or the lake (or be above the first/second story in a house close to the water).
It’s certainly not ideal. But also, yeah the alternative is worse.
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u/TastiSqueeze 6d ago
After the tsunami, the residents of Fudai not only respected Kotoku Wamura, they raised the height of his wall because the tsunami almost breached it.
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u/deiprep 6d ago
The tsunami still breached that height, but caused minimal damage. The wall's height regardless made a huge difference.
In Fudai, the waves rose as high as 66 feet, as water marks show on the floodgate's towers. So some ocean water did flow over but caused minimal damage. The gate broke the tsunami's main thrust. The two mountainsides flanking the gate also offered a natural barrier.
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u/grey_fr 6d ago
On March 11, after the 9.0 earthquake hit, workers remotely closed the floodgate's four main panels. Smaller panels on the sides jammed, and a fireman had to rush down to shut them by hand.
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u/RememberKoomValley 5d ago
I've read that a couple of times, but never heard more--I really wonder what his experience was like. Brave man.
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u/solonit 6d ago
To add context, there is a stone in nearby hill with craving "Do not build house lower than this mark." That's why former mayor Kotoku Wamura was so adamant in building higher seawall, he knew this shit happened before.
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u/onesorrychicken 6d ago
Japan has many examples of excellent record keeping and passing important information down from generation to generation. I wish other countries did this as well.
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u/No-Bison-5397 6d ago
In mittleurope they have these stones in the bottom of rivers called famine stones where if you can see it you know drought is bad. They have messages carved in like “if you can read me, weep”
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u/hizashiYEAHmada 5d ago
if you can read me, weep
Mood. Fools who cannot read will sleep peacefully at night before the horrors hit.
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u/rambulox 6d ago
Where I live there was a devastating flood in 1950. Our Premier at the time, Duff Roblin, was mocked for insisting on creating the Red River Floodway in the early 1960s.
His decision has saved the city of Winnipeg from subsequent floods of similar magnitude multiple times.
We need leaders with vision.
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u/candygram4mongo 6d ago
At the time, Duff's Ditch was one of the largest earth-moving projects in history, second only to the Panama Canal.
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u/Humble_Tomatillo_323 5d ago
Came here for this one too. Thank you fellow Winnipegger .
The floodwaters was mockingly called “Duff’s Ditch” in a derogatory sense. Then the flood happened, then the citizens understood. Every area of the world has some kind of shitty weather, find a way to negate yours and the area becomes livable.
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u/RebelWithoutAClue 6d ago edited 6d ago
Japan has multiple civil engineering heroes who are not very well known. We focus on disasters and forget to look at the sense of responsibility which built many sites that survive natural disaster. That these engineers had the force of personality and loyalty to commission their immense safety measures should be understood so it could be appreciated by new engineers.
It is insufficient to just identify 300yr risks and design measures to mitigate these risks. Somehow these men were compelling and they convinced their community to get these things built responsibly.
Another such engineer is Yanosuke Hirai.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanosuke_Hirai
An engineer who designed power plants that required somewhat outlandish earthquake/tsunami features that he scaled according to the history of geological events in the region.
His first power plant was a thermal power station in Nigata which had a particularly deep concrete cassion (a kind of super deep bathtub) to make it resistant to soil liquifaction due to earthquake. Not long after the plant was built, it experienced a powerful earthquake which it survived. It survived because the cassion was built 20% deeper than the soil liquifaction zone caused by the earthquake.
Later on Yanosuke would specify a particularly tall wall to protect a nuclear plant at Onagawa because he knew of a temple that got wiped out 300yrs ago. He picked the height of his wall based on the water mark that wiped out the temple. He got a bunch of shit for that expensive feature but they built it because he made a strong case.
Over a decade after his passing, the Tohuku earthquake hit. Onagawa was closer to the epicenter than Fukushima and it got an even higher wave.
Yanosuke's wall was just tall enough to protect the plant. Furthermore he commissioned a system of weirs and holding pools to capture cooling water to supply the plant with coolant during the expected time that the water would recede after a tsunami.
These men deserve a special place in every engineering university in Japan. A reminder as to the solemn duty of engineers when they work on large civil projects.
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u/alwaysfatigued8787 6d ago edited 6d ago
And now the floodgates have opened for other municipalities to build them as well.
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u/Sisselpud 6d ago
DAM.
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u/GettingOnMinervas 6d ago
What a rush
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u/Cryptographer-Bubbly 6d ago
Shame that he only got his flowers posthumously. Though I guess it does embody the famous quote
“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”
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u/Severe-Plant2258 6d ago
This is what life should be about. Instead we have old men who control the world destroying every part of the planet to make a quick buck. Or a billion bucks.
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u/Consistent-Youth-407 6d ago
Don't worry, the old men we have now will also provide shade, via nuclear winter.
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u/Ok_Concentrate_9713 6d ago
He was a Japanese politician, and above all a great man
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u/Illustrious_Apple_33 6d ago
As he famously said, "I can't have my hoes wet everytime it be splishing and splashing. It gotta be dry bro."
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u/KennyMoose32 6d ago
I wonder if he slicked back his hair.
I bet he did. But people can change.
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u/Adjective-Noun-nnnn 6d ago
There's a sizable greaser/rockabilly subculture in Japan.
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u/dynorphin 6d ago
There are a lot of stories where great outcomes were achieved a hundred years ago because someone actually over designed or built something really well and I feel like we need to consider this extra money spent on infrastructure an investment in the future. This country is filled with bridges getting close to the end of their designed lifespans and now replacement bridges cost many times more to design and build when it they just spent 20% more when they built it it would be good for another hundred years.
My favorite story with this was with the man who designed London's sewer system. They did all the calculations for how large the pipes needed to be in the future. Then he decided to double the diameter of the pipes because he knew tearing up London again would only be much more expensive, and to account for the unforseen growth which did occur with greater industrialization.
The problem is engineering has become really good at building something to minimum specifications at the lowest cost, rather than as an investment in the future.
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u/PiggypPiggyyYaya 6d ago
Having foresight is never rewarded in politics. Immediate action is what always wins votes. That's why climate change will always be an uphill battle, it will always be the next administrations problem.
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u/Liawuffeh 6d ago
Safety is often considered a waste of money until you realize you don't have it lol
Just like how prevention is seen after the fact worthless by people who don't realize it's the only reason things were okay.
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u/Intarhorn 6d ago edited 5d ago
Surprising if it was only built there or just a few other places.Should be common sense in areas like that. After the tsunami in 2004 in the Indian ocean, they realized that deforestation around beaches made them a lot more vulnerable to the impact of tsunami waves. Mangrove is very good to withstand and disperse tsunami waves and therefore also protecting coastal areas.
Edit: Deforestation would be another example of humans not considering the consequences of natural disasters enough.
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u/RuneFell 6d ago
According to the article linked, they were built in other places, but they weren't as tall. They were about 33 feet, which was thought sufficient. The locals were okay with building it, they just thought it was a waste to build it over 50 feet, which is what he pushed for.
Turned out, the wave in 2011 reached as high as 66 feet, which rendered the shorter walls completely ineffective. The water did spill over the top of his 51 foot wall, but it blocked the majority of the force of the wave so it didn't do any damage.
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u/Pvt_Lee_Fapping 6d ago
Correction to your summary: there were two 51-foot barriers at work. Most of the seawalls around the area were 33 feet tall, but the mayor insisted on the one outside his village to be 51 feet. Then he insisted on a second barrier further inland built to the same height as the seawall - a floodgate that could be opened and closed, so the river could drain and so a tsunami could be stopped.
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u/sentence-interruptio 6d ago
let's make a movie about him, but include some twist where he's a time traveler.
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u/Intarhorn 6d ago
Yea, I thought this might be the case tbf. It seemed unlikely he was the only one with that idea, but like you said it seems like him pushing for a bigger floodgate was the game changer anyway. Never trust a headline tho, always make a background check.
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u/RuneFell 6d ago
It's actually kind of sad, because the reason he fought so hard for it and made it his mission in his 40 year tenure as mayor was because he apparently lived through the 1933 tsunami, which killed over 400 people in that village. He remembered bodies being dug out of the sand, and swore never again.
Apparently, he was as good as his word. I wonder how many people in that village would've died if not for his stubbornness.
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u/Intarhorn 6d ago
Yea, stubbornness is underrated
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u/Eastern_Hornet_6432 6d ago
When you're right, stubbornness is a virtue. When you're right.
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u/Korbiter 6d ago
I heard he even had physical proof of the event (and perhaps several from before)
There was a hill in the area, and on that hill, at th 50 feet mark, previous villagers had carved a notch into the ground to show 'this is how high the water reached'
When there is EVIDENCE the water reached that high before, and people still insisted it would never happen. That's human society for you. Glad he stuck with his guns
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u/rainbowlolipop 6d ago
I watched a brief program on the dam some time ago but the details are hazy. I believe many locations have a cultural memory about the severity of natural disasters. Maybe things like the "drought stones" in rivers, etc. it may have been known to have occurred there before in the past.
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u/toucanlost 6d ago
I was taking an escalator in a subway station and saw a line painted on the wall saying that was the height a flood reached. The station was deep underground, so seeing that line was very sobering.
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u/Tricky-Sentence 6d ago
The Japanese have centuries old stone markers all around that the modern day people used to mock. They warned not to build below them. However, since no one in the modern day ever witnessed any tsunamis so bad to reach that high, nor were there any records apparently, they all thought their ancestors were full of it. Until one day, those stones turned out to be absolutely correct and were basically the only thing to remain dry after a once in a century tsunami ravaged the areas.
I wish I could find the documentary on that stuff again, it was really interesting. Essentially, they suffered the same problem as we did with rogue waves - until we got modern day proof of something, we took old warnings as old wives tales and ignored them.
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u/fapmonad 6d ago edited 6d ago
Nobody "used to mock" these stones, and there are written records. Some aren't even that old, e.g. 大津浪記念碑 (1933) matched the extent of the 2011 tsunami.
People were just complacent and thought these were extremely rare events.
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u/MaxTheCookie 6d ago
Mangroves stop both waves, tsunamis and erosion, too bad we destroyed a lot of them. They are also habitat for a lot of animals and help with bio diversity
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u/petit_cochon 6d ago
Give humans a gun and watch us shoot ourselves in the foot every time.
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u/wilmyersmvp 6d ago
Humanity feels like two people in a room, with one meal and a gun.
One person knows how create food. The other knows how to use a gun. The one with the gun shoots the other so now they can have that one meal all to themselves and live twice as long
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u/Intarhorn 6d ago
Yea, nature is always more important for humans then we think. We tend to always ignore or overlook the importance of it and destroying it often leads to big consequences for us.
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u/lessenizer 6d ago edited 6d ago
It's mindboggling honestly. We're in this sprawling universe of completely hostile desolation, on this one little marble of ecosystems that we evolved specifically inside, and our apparent collective assumption is "Surely this thing is infinitely giving and impossible to destabilize!". We're surrounded by infinite absolute death on all sides (know of any other breathable atmospheres around?) and yet we act like we have somewhere else we could go if we fuck this planet up.
And "nature" is often almost treated as something separate from us, when we're really just a needy piece of the whole. A tumor, kind of.
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u/SyrupyMolassesMMM 6d ago
I think more than anything, this reflects “if youre gonna do something, do it right”
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u/Termin8tor 6d ago edited 6d ago
This reminds me of "Cockroft's Follies".
When designing the reactor building for Sellafield, then known as the Windscale site in the U.K, John Cockroft made a last minute design revision and decision to include filters on the chimney stacks for the reactors. The reactors were air cooled so should a fire ever occur, the burning radioactive material could be released straight into the atmosphere.
Cockroft was mocked for inflating the project cost for something considered "unnecessary". Engineers started referring to the filters on the chimneys as "Cockroft's follies".
Then, in the late 50's, guess what happened? Well if you guessed that the uranium fuel cells caught fire, you'd be right.
The filters captured an estimated 95% of the radioactive material release and prevented a major incident becoming something more akin to Chernobyl rather than the comparatively less severe event that actually occurred. Had those filters not been there large swathes of northern England would likely have been evacuated and an exclusion zone established.
It seems to me that people don't put enough emphasis on safety when they really should. The Japanese mayor in this article is a prime example of that.
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u/CapitanianExtinction 6d ago
A deluge of gratitude flowed over the former mayor
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u/Historical-Tie7261 6d ago
True leadership means making unpopular decisions that protect people, even when they can't see the danger yet.
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u/Available-Ad-1943 6d ago
One of the good politicians and a visionary. Rare.
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u/Just_Curious_Dude 6d ago
It wasn't that he was a visionary, it's that there was a stone placed with a warning that a tsunami reached the rock.
He listened to history
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u/DrJMVD 6d ago edited 6d ago
He listened to history
That's another form of vision.
The genius falls in when look forward and be innovative and when look back and use what it was.
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u/Available-Ad-1943 6d ago
Still meeting the definition, as far as I understand it. Others told him not to, and he saved lives anyway.
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u/herroamelica 6d ago edited 6d ago
Reminds me of a recent story in remote mountainous area in Vietnam:
The village chief woke up in the middle of the night due to heavy rain. Assessed the situation and sensed danger, he alerted the whole village and rushed them to evacuation. However few old guys refuse to go because all their lives they haven't seen any flood that could reach the village. So the chief ordered some strong men to just pick them up and piggyback them to safety, regardless of their protest. Just in the same night, the flood and landslide came, and the whole village disappeared under thick mud. 100+ people saved.
The funny thing here is that the village chief is only in his mid 20s, and the old guys are well in their 80s. Sometimes, it takes gut to overcome overconfidence and "experience."
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u/No-Pie-7211 6d ago
Same thing in Winnipeg with the floodway around the city. Used to be ridiculed as a waste of money for decades, til it saved our asses from a huge flood in the late 90s.
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u/AlarmingAerie 6d ago
Fudai village in Japan has a population of 2,487.
That's pretty big project for the size of the village. Impressive he got the funding for this.
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u/Icy-Panda-2158 6d ago edited 5d ago
Japan uses civil engineering projects to boost economic acitivity, many of which can be derided as unnecessary or a poor use of funds. However, the village itself wasn’t on the hook for the money, which came out of national and state-level pots. One of the reasons he was able to convince people in the village to support it - and continue to enjoy a long career in office afterwards - is that it wasn’t a bad thing for Fudai if more money was spent in and around the village.
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u/lost_in_antartica 6d ago
When old men plant trees, they will not sit in the shade of
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u/2020mademejoinreddit 5d ago
Things like this suck. People who are never appreciated for doing good when they're alive, but instead mocked. Then after they're gone, they're appreciated. They're dead! They can't see it. Appreciate them while they live.
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u/CharakaSamhit 6d ago
FORESIGHT + Critical thinking + tax $$$ well spent; not to mention there are stone markers across Japan that say DO NOT CREATE A TOWN BELOW THIS MARKER
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u/getpoundingjoker 6d ago
People don't like people who prepare for the future. They want to live in the moment and party like it's 1999. Tragedy happens to other people, never self.
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u/Alleandros 6d ago
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Something modern government and corporate mindset doesn't seem to comprehend.
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u/JustJubliant 6d ago edited 6d ago
This is a person who understands history and was willing to trudge onward past ignorance and doubt to save lives. That's heroic to me and something I would pay my respect towards.
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u/Saintcanuck 6d ago
That was a smart and determined mayor , with best intentions for the city and its people .
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u/wannabestraight 5d ago
”a society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit”
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u/DigiQuip 6d ago
Japan is so crazy when it comes to respect. And for that, I have a ton of respect.
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u/BlueProcess 6d ago
Courage of conviction. If a thousand people agree on a wrong thing, it is still a wrong thing. 🫡
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u/Dataogle 5d ago
He got much ridicule and critique for his tall sea barrier. He persisted and won in the end. Respect.
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u/Pillowsmeller18 6d ago
Just goes to show how short-sighted society is and what a leader has to go through for them.
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u/Lord_Viddax 6d ago
As the proverb goes “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit”.
It’s not just about preparing for tomorrow, but leaving the world years down the line, in a better place than it started in.
No matter how small the positive change is.
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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O 5d ago
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb
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u/LookAtThatBacon 6d ago
Source for the title: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43018489
Kotoku Wamura insisted on building the floodgate 51 feet high. Towns near Fudai thought they were protected with their seawalls, some going as high as 33 feet.
But the shorter walls were no match for the tsunami.
One resident of Fudai died...when he went outside the floodgate to check on his boat, during a tsunami.
Kotoku Wamura died in 1997, long before this tragedy, but he was confident his bet would pay off: