Chiune Sugihara
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Chiune Sugihara (杉原千畝 Sugihara Chiune, January 1, 1900 – July 31, 1986) was a Japanese diplomat who saved Jews during the World War II when he was a Japanese consul to Lithuania. He was one of those who appeared to have no discernible motivation other than just wanting to do what was right, and came to be known as the "Japanese Schindler."
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Biography
Chiune Sugihara was born January 1 1900 in Yaotsu, a rural area in Gifu Prefecture of the Chubu region in Japan to a middle-class father, Yoshimizu Sugihara, and Yatsu Sugihara, a samurai-class mother. He was the second son among 5 boys and 1 girl.
In 1912, he graduated with top honors from Furuwatari School, and entered Nagoya Daigo Chugaku, a combined junior and high school. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a doctor but he deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only his name on the exam papers. Instead in 1918 he entered Waseda University and majored in English literature. In 1919, he passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam. The Japanese Foreign Ministry recruited him and assigned him to Harbin, China, where he also studied Russian and German and later become an expert of Russian affairs.
When Sugihara served in the Manchurian Foreign Office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union about the Northern Manchurian Railroad. He quit his post in Manchuria in protest over Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese. In 1935 he returned to Japan to marry Yukiko Kikuchi, who became Yukiko Sugihara (杉原幸子 Sugihara Yukiko) after the marriage. Chiune Sugihara also served in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a translator for Japanese legation in Helsinki, Finland. In 1939 he become a vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. His other duty was to report on Soviet and German troop movements.
When the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1940, many Jewish refugees from Poland tried to acquire exit visas. Without the visas, it was dangerous to travel, and impossible to find countries willing to issue them. A number of them came to Japanese consulate, trying to get a visa to Japan. The Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk had provided some of them with an official third destination to Curacao or Dutch Guiana, a Caribbean island that required no entry visa. At the time Japanese government followed officially neutral policy towards the Jews but demanded that only those who had gone through appropriate immigration procedures and had enough funds could get a visa. Most of the refugees did not fulfill these criteria.
Sugihara dutifully contacted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time, the Ministry responded that anybody granted a visa should have a visa to a third destination to exit Japan, with no exceptions.
In July 29-31 (sources disagree) Sugihara began to grant visas on his own initiative, aided by his wife. Many times he ignored the requirements and arranged the Jews with a 10-day Visa to transit through Japan. He spoke to Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel through the country via Trans-Siberian railway - at five times the standard ticket price.
Sugihara and his wife continued to hand-write visas (reportedly spending 18-20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month's worth of visas each day) until September 4, when he had to leave his post for Berlin before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of them heads of household who could take their families with them. Witnesses say he was still writing on the train, throwing the visas out the train's window even as it pulled out for Berlin. The number is in dispute, ranging from 2139 to 10,000; most likely it was on the lower scale, but were family visas, allowing several people to travel on one visa, which would account for the higher figure.
Many refugees used their visas to travel through Soviet Union to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Russian Jewish community. From there 1000 departed to other destinations like the United States and the British Mandate of Palestine. The remaining had to stay in Japan until they were deported to Japanese-held Shanghai, where there was also a large Jewish refugee community. There they remained until the Japanese surrender in 1945.
Despite German pressure for the Japanese government to either hand over or kill the Jewish refugees, the government protected the group. In The Fugu Plan (a book about the 1930s Fugu Plot), Rabbi Marvin Tokayer offered one hypothesis: It was in gratitude for a $196 million loan that an American Jewish banker from New York, Jacob Schiff, had given them; the funds helped them to victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905. Another hypothesis is that some Japanese leaders were reading anti-Semitic tracts attributing the Jews with wealth and power, traits desirable to the Japanese empire.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry, still needing Chiune's language and organizational skills, decided to postpone disciplinary action until his skills were no longer needed. Sugihara served as a Consulate General in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1941 in K๖nigsberg and in legation in Romania. When Russian troops entered Romania, Soviet troops imprisoned Sugihara and his family in a POW camp for 18 months. They were released in 1946 and returned to Japan through the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railroad and Nakhodka port. In 1947 the Japanese foreign office asked him to resign, at least nominally due to downsizing but probably also due to his actions in Lithuania. He was in disgrace (the result of a culture that emphasized obedience to superiors above all else).
Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture. He began to work as a manager for an export company (Tokyo, U.S.A., as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange).
In 1968, Jehoshua Nishri, economic attache to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and, more importantly, one of the 'Sugihara survivors', finally located and contacted Sugihara. Nishri had been a Polish teen in 1940. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara survivors began to lobby for inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial.
In 1985 the state of Israel honored Sugihara with the Yad Vashem Prize and he was nominated one of the "Righteous Among the Nations". He was the only Asian recipient of this honor. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel and his wife and daughter accepted the honor on his behalf.
That year, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked why he did it. Sugihara liked to give two reasons: one, that these refugees were humans beings, and the other, that they simply needed help.
Chiune Sugihara died the following year, on July 31, 1986. Sugihara Street in Kaunas, Lithuania and the asteroid 25893 Sugihara are named after him. The Chiune Sugihara Memorial in the town of Yaotsu (his birthplace) was built by the people of the town in his honor.
Movies and other media
TV station of Japan made documentary film about Chiune Sugihara. This film was shot in Kaunas in the same place of the former embassy of Japan.
Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness from PBS - http://www.pbs.org/sugihara This is the permanent companion site for the film. The web site shares details of the little-known story of Sugihara and his family and the fascinating relationship between the Jews and the Japanese in the 1930s and 40s. The history of World War II tells many remarkable tales of courage, but none is more compelling or inspirational than Sugihara's. At great personal risk and with no hope of reward, this modest diplomat defied orders from Tokyo and spent up to 16 hours a day signing visas for refugees trying to escape the Nazi onslaught. The site includes a timeline of Sugihara's life, video previews, exclusive interviews, and lesson plans for teachers.
The progressive metal band Savatage wrote a song on their Handful of Rain album about Sugihara's efforts named "Chance". The song features a five-part vocal canon representing his conflicting thoughts.
See also
Books
- Yukiko Sugihara: Visas for Life (1995) (translation of Rokusennin no inochi no biza, 1990) ISBN 0964967405
- Hillel Levine: In Search of Sugihara (1996) ISBN 0684832518
External links
- Chiune Sugihara Centennial Celebration (http://www.chiunesugihara100.com/eng/e-top.htm)
- Jewish Virtual Library: Chiune and Yukiko Sugihara (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sugihara.html)
- The Sugihara Project (http://www.eagleman.com/sugihara/)
- Visas for Life Foundation (http://www.visasforlife.org/sugihara.html)
- Immortal Chaplains Foundation Prize for Humanity 2000 (Awarded to Sugihara in 2000) (http://www.immortalchaplains.org/Prize/Ceremony2000/Sugihara/sugihara.htm)he:ืฆ'ืืืื ื_ืกืืืืืืจื