Essay
Beyond the Call of Duty: The Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara
by Beryl Belsky (from my blog The Asia Collection)
History books, literature and movies influence our view of a particular person, country, event or period. In the 1930s and 1940s Japan was realizing its imperialist ambitions on the Asian continent and, as an Axis power together with Germany, fought the Allies in the Asia-Pacific arena in World War II. The Western perception of Japan during that period is therefore colored partly by portrayals in these media of its treatment of citizens in the countries it occupied, such as China, Manchuria (the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo) and Korea, and of Allied prisoners of war in Southeast Asia. However, sometimes the deeds of an individual citizen can serve to soften or modify an image.
Chiune, or Sempo (according to the Chinese reading of his name) Sugihara (1900-1986) was just such a person, a Japanese diplomat who defied not only the principles of his profession but of a traditionally ordered and obedient society in order to save thousands of people. Ironically, perhaps, Sugihara’s deeds took place not in the Asian arena but on the other side of the world, in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. There, as vice consul of Imperial Japan and over a period of less than one month during the summer of 1940, he violated his government’s instructions and issued over 2,000 transit visas to Jewish refugees, mostly from Poland, enabling an estimated 6,000 Jews to escape the Holocaust.
The individualist streak in Sugihara’s character, however, was evident much earlier. In his late teens he deliberately failed the exam to enter medical school, contrary to his father's wishes, so that he could pursue his love of languages and literature and eventually a diplomatic career. After he had passed the Foreign Ministry entrance exam in 1919, he was sent to Harbin, Manchuria, where he studied Russian and German and became an expert in Russian affairs. He spent some 15 years in the Japanese puppet state (which it had invaded in 1931), working some of the time for the Manchurian Foreign Ministry. He resigned in 1934-35 in protest over his country’s mistreatment of the local population – another indication of his courage and strength of character, as well as a willingness to defy his government and take a stand against it.
In August 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly divided Poland and Lithuania (among other countries) between them into “spheres of influence.” However, within a few weeks, each power had invaded its part of Poland and annexed it, and within a year the Soviet Union had taken over Lithuania and installed a puppet government there. When World War II broke out in September 1939, thousands of Jews fled the German part of Poland − and almost certain death or incarceration in a ghetto or a concentration camp − to Lithuania. The Soviet takeover of Lithuania in summer 1940 created a new set of Jewish victims with its purge of liberals, intellectuals and Russian Mensheviks. All sought to flee Europe for the New World, but because they could not go south or west through the Nazi-occupied areas, the only way out for the refugees was to traverse the USSR by trans-Siberian railway to the Far East and try to get to the Americas from there.
It was during this period that Sugihara was assigned to open a Japanese consulate in Kaunas, the temporary capital of “neutral” Lithuania. As noted, Japan was an ally of Germany, but in light of the Soviet-German pact, Japan was watching both countries uneasily. In Kaunas, Sugihara served alone, as vice-consul, and also as an intelligence agent, reporting on Soviet and German troop movements. With the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in summer 1940, the communist authorities ordered all consulates in Kaunas to be closed. Sugihara had sought a short extension and was among only a handful of foreign diplomats left in Kaunas. He immediately found himself inundated with pleas from desperate refugees begging for transit visas to Japan. Thousands of them besieged the consulate day and night. When Sugihara sought instructions from Japan, he was told that the applicants must hold a valid visa for a final destination and sufficient funds for the journey. Most had neither of these requirements. However, the acting Dutch consul, Jan Zwartendijk, who had also remained in the Lithuanian capital, agreed to help by stamping some refugee passports with a visa so that they could travel to the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Dutch Guiana (Suriname). But the Soviet authorities still demanded that all refugees obtain transit visas for Japan in order to ensure that they left the USSR. Moreover, they demanded bribes and overcharged them by five times the normal rate for crossing the Soviet Union.
After consulting with his wife Yukiko, Sugihara reached a difficult decision. By disregarding the instructions of his superiors he knew he faced possible dismissal and disgrace for his family. However, confronted by the sea of desperate refugees clamoring for visas day and night, his humanitarian instincts won out. “I may have to disobey my government,” he said, “but if I don’t, I would be disobeying God.” Working sometimes for more than 16 hours, day after day, between July 31 and August 28, 1940, in the period before the consulate closed, he manually filled out some 300 visas a day – more than he would normally do in a month. Yukiko actively assisted him in this task. Even as they boarded the train to leave Kaunas the Sugiharas were handing out visas, and finally even the stamp, so that the refugees could use it to forge these vital documents. Overall, Sugihara issued 2,140 visas, and since those holding a visa could bring their families with them, several thousand were able to go (although not all succeeded in departing before the Soviet Union stopped granting exit visas). Those who could (and many, as noted, had no funds or papers for a final destination), left for Moscow, took the trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok and from there crossed the straits to Kobe, Japan. Some of them spent the rest of the war in Shanghai, while others continued to destinations in the Western Hemisphere.
It should be noted that although Japan was an ally of Germany, it rejected Nazi demands to implement an antisemitic policy, including extermination of the Jews of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In December 1938, Japan’s highest decision making body resolved not to expel the Jews living in Japan. Some Japanese leaders even considered using the alleged economic power and influence of the Jews to further the strategic interests of their country. However, the plan was hampered by Japan’s commitment to Nazi Germany. When the refugees began arriving in Kobe, they were encouraged to move to the Shanghai ghetto, where they were concentrated under the benign protection of Japan.
After the Sugiharas left Kaunas, the Japanese continued to require the use of Chiune’s skills and he moved on to hold posts in Berlin, Prague (Bohemia), and Bucharest (Romania), among others. After the Soviets marched through the Balkans in 1944, Sugihara and his family (he had three children at the time) were arrested in the latter capital and interned for three years with diplomats from other enemy countries. On his return to Japan in 1947, Sugihara was retired from the Foreign Ministry with a small pension. Some sources say he was dismissed because of his insubordination in Kaunas, but others claim that he was forced to leave as part of a large staff reduction in the ministry while the country was under American occupation. He held a variety of part-time jobs as an interpreter and translator, and finally found a position for 15 years in a Japanese export company that did business with Moscow.
Since the Sugiharas never spoke about what they did, it was only in 1969 that their story began to emerge. An Israeli diplomat posted to Tokyo launched a search for the man who had saved his life by issuing his family with a visa. Eventually, more survivors came forward and testified to the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. In 1985 Sugihara was awarded Yad Vashem’s highest honor as the “Righteous among the Nations.” He was too ill to travel, however, and Yukiko and one of his sons flew to Jerusalem for the ceremony. Many other tributes followed posthumously, after he died in 1986. The Chiune Sugihara memorial park, "The Hill of Humanities," in the town of Yaotsu, his birthplace, was built by the people of the town in his honor. In 1999, the Lithuanian government inaugurated Sugihara House, in the old consulate building in Kaunas. The museum also honors other diplomats who helped save Jews, such as the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk. In addition, Sugihara is commemorated in the United States and in Poland. In April 2000, the United Nations held a ceremony honoring 65 diplomats from 22 countries who risked their careers by helping Jews escape from the Nazis. Among the names was Chiune Sugihara. A lesser known Asian official who was also instrumental in helping thousands of Jews flee Europe was Feng Shan Ho, Chinese consul general in Vienna, 1938-39.
Whether Sugihara’s dismissal in 1947 was a punishment or not, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs eventually recognized his deed and unveiled a memorial plaque in his name at its Diplomatic Record Office, in the year 2000, the centenary of his birth. It also posted a page about him on its website.
And now, the riddle, if there is one, about Sugihara's motives. Why would a Japanese person, and a career diplomat at that, educated and trained to serve his country unquestioningly, risk his livelihood and even the lives of himself and his family, by saving Jews. After all, what did he know about them and why would he care about them? In Kaunas he had become friendly with a Jewish family, the Ganors, who as Mensheviks had fled Russia in the 1920s after the Bolshevik Revolution. He had tried to save them by giving them visas but they were unable to leave because they were Soviet citizens. This friendship, however, does not explain Sugihara’s rescue of thousands of unknown Jews. The answer, therefore, lies not in his background, education, upbringing, or any other such factor, but in the nature of the man himself. From an early age he demonstrated a natural curiosity to learn about other religions, cultures, languages and peoples. Moreover, he converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity while he was in Harbin and for a short time was married to a Russian woman − acts demonstrating that he did not fit into the traditional Japanese mold but had a liberal, individualist streak. He continued to be a religious man, believing in a universal god of all peoples. Thus, his conduct in Kaunas would seem to have been in keeping with this worldview, which embraced compassion and humanitarianism: “"They were human beings and they needed help,” he said 45 years later.
References
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sugihara.html
http://hkcssst.net/papers/japanIssue08/TheSugiharaStory.pdf
http://www.sugiharahouse.lt/index_en.html
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005594
http://chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/rescuers/diploRescuerRole.html
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/002619.shtml
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/13040/u-n-honors-wwii-diplomats-who-helped-jews-escape-nazis/
For more on the friendship between Sugihara and the Ganor family, and particularly with their son Solly, who was 11 at the time, see http://www.rongreene.com/sollyphotog3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Japan
Chiune, or Sempo (according to the Chinese reading of his name) Sugihara (1900-1986) was just such a person, a Japanese diplomat who defied not only the principles of his profession but of a traditionally ordered and obedient society in order to save thousands of people. Ironically, perhaps, Sugihara’s deeds took place not in the Asian arena but on the other side of the world, in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania. There, as vice consul of Imperial Japan and over a period of less than one month during the summer of 1940, he violated his government’s instructions and issued over 2,000 transit visas to Jewish refugees, mostly from Poland, enabling an estimated 6,000 Jews to escape the Holocaust.
The individualist streak in Sugihara’s character, however, was evident much earlier. In his late teens he deliberately failed the exam to enter medical school, contrary to his father's wishes, so that he could pursue his love of languages and literature and eventually a diplomatic career. After he had passed the Foreign Ministry entrance exam in 1919, he was sent to Harbin, Manchuria, where he studied Russian and German and became an expert in Russian affairs. He spent some 15 years in the Japanese puppet state (which it had invaded in 1931), working some of the time for the Manchurian Foreign Ministry. He resigned in 1934-35 in protest over his country’s mistreatment of the local population – another indication of his courage and strength of character, as well as a willingness to defy his government and take a stand against it.
In August 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the notorious Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which secretly divided Poland and Lithuania (among other countries) between them into “spheres of influence.” However, within a few weeks, each power had invaded its part of Poland and annexed it, and within a year the Soviet Union had taken over Lithuania and installed a puppet government there. When World War II broke out in September 1939, thousands of Jews fled the German part of Poland − and almost certain death or incarceration in a ghetto or a concentration camp − to Lithuania. The Soviet takeover of Lithuania in summer 1940 created a new set of Jewish victims with its purge of liberals, intellectuals and Russian Mensheviks. All sought to flee Europe for the New World, but because they could not go south or west through the Nazi-occupied areas, the only way out for the refugees was to traverse the USSR by trans-Siberian railway to the Far East and try to get to the Americas from there.
It was during this period that Sugihara was assigned to open a Japanese consulate in Kaunas, the temporary capital of “neutral” Lithuania. As noted, Japan was an ally of Germany, but in light of the Soviet-German pact, Japan was watching both countries uneasily. In Kaunas, Sugihara served alone, as vice-consul, and also as an intelligence agent, reporting on Soviet and German troop movements. With the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in summer 1940, the communist authorities ordered all consulates in Kaunas to be closed. Sugihara had sought a short extension and was among only a handful of foreign diplomats left in Kaunas. He immediately found himself inundated with pleas from desperate refugees begging for transit visas to Japan. Thousands of them besieged the consulate day and night. When Sugihara sought instructions from Japan, he was told that the applicants must hold a valid visa for a final destination and sufficient funds for the journey. Most had neither of these requirements. However, the acting Dutch consul, Jan Zwartendijk, who had also remained in the Lithuanian capital, agreed to help by stamping some refugee passports with a visa so that they could travel to the Dutch Caribbean islands of Curacao and Dutch Guiana (Suriname). But the Soviet authorities still demanded that all refugees obtain transit visas for Japan in order to ensure that they left the USSR. Moreover, they demanded bribes and overcharged them by five times the normal rate for crossing the Soviet Union.
After consulting with his wife Yukiko, Sugihara reached a difficult decision. By disregarding the instructions of his superiors he knew he faced possible dismissal and disgrace for his family. However, confronted by the sea of desperate refugees clamoring for visas day and night, his humanitarian instincts won out. “I may have to disobey my government,” he said, “but if I don’t, I would be disobeying God.” Working sometimes for more than 16 hours, day after day, between July 31 and August 28, 1940, in the period before the consulate closed, he manually filled out some 300 visas a day – more than he would normally do in a month. Yukiko actively assisted him in this task. Even as they boarded the train to leave Kaunas the Sugiharas were handing out visas, and finally even the stamp, so that the refugees could use it to forge these vital documents. Overall, Sugihara issued 2,140 visas, and since those holding a visa could bring their families with them, several thousand were able to go (although not all succeeded in departing before the Soviet Union stopped granting exit visas). Those who could (and many, as noted, had no funds or papers for a final destination), left for Moscow, took the trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok and from there crossed the straits to Kobe, Japan. Some of them spent the rest of the war in Shanghai, while others continued to destinations in the Western Hemisphere.
It should be noted that although Japan was an ally of Germany, it rejected Nazi demands to implement an antisemitic policy, including extermination of the Jews of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. In December 1938, Japan’s highest decision making body resolved not to expel the Jews living in Japan. Some Japanese leaders even considered using the alleged economic power and influence of the Jews to further the strategic interests of their country. However, the plan was hampered by Japan’s commitment to Nazi Germany. When the refugees began arriving in Kobe, they were encouraged to move to the Shanghai ghetto, where they were concentrated under the benign protection of Japan.
After the Sugiharas left Kaunas, the Japanese continued to require the use of Chiune’s skills and he moved on to hold posts in Berlin, Prague (Bohemia), and Bucharest (Romania), among others. After the Soviets marched through the Balkans in 1944, Sugihara and his family (he had three children at the time) were arrested in the latter capital and interned for three years with diplomats from other enemy countries. On his return to Japan in 1947, Sugihara was retired from the Foreign Ministry with a small pension. Some sources say he was dismissed because of his insubordination in Kaunas, but others claim that he was forced to leave as part of a large staff reduction in the ministry while the country was under American occupation. He held a variety of part-time jobs as an interpreter and translator, and finally found a position for 15 years in a Japanese export company that did business with Moscow.
Since the Sugiharas never spoke about what they did, it was only in 1969 that their story began to emerge. An Israeli diplomat posted to Tokyo launched a search for the man who had saved his life by issuing his family with a visa. Eventually, more survivors came forward and testified to the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem. In 1985 Sugihara was awarded Yad Vashem’s highest honor as the “Righteous among the Nations.” He was too ill to travel, however, and Yukiko and one of his sons flew to Jerusalem for the ceremony. Many other tributes followed posthumously, after he died in 1986. The Chiune Sugihara memorial park, "The Hill of Humanities," in the town of Yaotsu, his birthplace, was built by the people of the town in his honor. In 1999, the Lithuanian government inaugurated Sugihara House, in the old consulate building in Kaunas. The museum also honors other diplomats who helped save Jews, such as the Dutch consul Jan Zwartendijk. In addition, Sugihara is commemorated in the United States and in Poland. In April 2000, the United Nations held a ceremony honoring 65 diplomats from 22 countries who risked their careers by helping Jews escape from the Nazis. Among the names was Chiune Sugihara. A lesser known Asian official who was also instrumental in helping thousands of Jews flee Europe was Feng Shan Ho, Chinese consul general in Vienna, 1938-39.
Whether Sugihara’s dismissal in 1947 was a punishment or not, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs eventually recognized his deed and unveiled a memorial plaque in his name at its Diplomatic Record Office, in the year 2000, the centenary of his birth. It also posted a page about him on its website.
And now, the riddle, if there is one, about Sugihara's motives. Why would a Japanese person, and a career diplomat at that, educated and trained to serve his country unquestioningly, risk his livelihood and even the lives of himself and his family, by saving Jews. After all, what did he know about them and why would he care about them? In Kaunas he had become friendly with a Jewish family, the Ganors, who as Mensheviks had fled Russia in the 1920s after the Bolshevik Revolution. He had tried to save them by giving them visas but they were unable to leave because they were Soviet citizens. This friendship, however, does not explain Sugihara’s rescue of thousands of unknown Jews. The answer, therefore, lies not in his background, education, upbringing, or any other such factor, but in the nature of the man himself. From an early age he demonstrated a natural curiosity to learn about other religions, cultures, languages and peoples. Moreover, he converted to Greek Orthodox Christianity while he was in Harbin and for a short time was married to a Russian woman − acts demonstrating that he did not fit into the traditional Japanese mold but had a liberal, individualist streak. He continued to be a religious man, believing in a universal god of all peoples. Thus, his conduct in Kaunas would seem to have been in keeping with this worldview, which embraced compassion and humanitarianism: “"They were human beings and they needed help,” he said 45 years later.
References
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/sugihara.html
http://hkcssst.net/papers/japanIssue08/TheSugiharaStory.pdf
http://www.sugiharahouse.lt/index_en.html
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005594
http://chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/rescuers/diploRescuerRole.html
http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archives/002619.shtml
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/13040/u-n-honors-wwii-diplomats-who-helped-jews-escape-nazis/
For more on the friendship between Sugihara and the Ganor family, and particularly with their son Solly, who was 11 at the time, see http://www.rongreene.com/sollyphotog3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Japan
