Japanese Envoy's Defiance Saved Jews in War

In the 1960s and 1970s there lived in Moscow's Ukraine Hotel an unassuming little middle-aged foreign businessman. His name was Chiune Sugihara and, like most Japanese men of his age, he didn't talk about the war very much.But Sugihara's reasons for silence were different from most. For 30 years earlier he had outwitted the Nazis and saved the lives of 6,000 Jews. To do that, he had risked death, seen his diplomatic career ruined, been rejected by his country and gone to live in obscurity in a strange land. He died in 1986, his heroism unrecognized in his homeland.Not every Oskar Schindler gets a Steven Spielberg. But, in the advent of the Oscar-winning Holocaust movie "Schindler's List," which opens next week in Moscow, details of Sugihara's remarkable story are emerging. Sugihari's widow Yukiko is recalling with pride the turbulent events of half a century ago. "My husband was then a diplomat and a fluent Russian speaker, and the Foreign Ministry wanted him to go to Moscow," she said. But Sugihara's visa application was rejected by the Soviet government and this led to him being sent to Kaunas, Lithuania, in November 1939. Eight months later the consul would be faced with the most important decision of his life.In his real role as a spy, keeping an eye on Germany's troop movements, Sugihara was well aware of the plight of eastern Europe's Jewish population. Caught between the Nazis on one side and Stalin's armies on the other, it seemed there was no escape. But a glimmer of hope appeared. A young Dutch Jew identified a long and unlikely route to freedom: crossing the Soviet Union to Japan under the pretext of going to the Dutch colony of Curacao, one of the few places left in the world that did not require an entry visa. The student persuaded the Dutch consul to put a stamp in his passport stating this fact. He then presented himself at the Japanese consulate and asked for a transit visa, on the basis that he needed to pass through Japan on his way to the Caribbean island. Sugihara granted the visa without demur, according to his widow.They had found a way out. Word spread quickly among the Jewish community and on July 27, 1940 a crowd lay siege to the consulate.Yukiko remembered the suddenness of this event and her husband's ensuing dilemma. Issuing one or two visas was no problem. But to issue hundreds, perhaps even thousands, was a different matter and one on which Sugihara had to consult with Tokyo. "Three times he cabled the foreign ministry asking for permission to issue the visas," said Yukiko. Three times his request was denied.By Aug. 1, Sugihara had made his mind up to do "what we as human beings should do," as he put it. Risking his job and his family's safety as the Soviet forces marched into Lithuania, Sugihara holed up at the consulate and began to issue transit papers."For a month he worked day and night writing visas," said Yukiko. When the Russians closed the consulate he continued to issue transit papers from his hotel. Even as he and his family left Kaunas by train, he was still handing visas out of the window to the pleading refugees on the platform, according to his widow.Sugihara estimated that he issued around 1,600 Japanese visas during August 1940. Given that many more visas were later forged and that one visa was often used for several family members, Sugihara's wife Yukiko believes that her husband enabled as many as 6,000 people to escape the Holocaust.Sugihara spent the rest of the war in diplomatic posts around Europe. But with Japan's defeat, his own fortunes took a plunge. After being interned with his family in Romania for a year, the consul made a perilous journey by train across the Soviet Union.Sugihara and his family arrived safely back in Japan in April 1947. A few months later, Sugihara was called into the foreign ministry and unceremoniously fired. In a rare interview before his death in 1986, he explained: "It was specifically because I went against their policy and issued the visas to the Jews seven years earlier."Sugihara's talent with languages eventually gained him work. In May 1960, he decided to take up a post in Moscow with Kawakami, one of the first Japanese trading firms to break into the Russian market. Living at the Hotel Ukraine, Sugihara was originally supposed to stay five years, but ended up leaving 15 years later when he retired in 1975. It was not until 1968 that his actions were acknowledged, thanks to the efforts of some of those he had saved, and in the years that followed he received a succession of honors from Israeli and Jewish organizations. But in his native Japan, Sugihara's story remained almost unknown.Only in 1991, five years after Sugihara's death, did the foreign ministry apologize to Yukiko for firing her husband. This proved the catalyst for Japan's belated discovery of its quiet war hero, and soon afterward there appeared a play and television dramatization of Yukiko's book, and a park dedicated to Sugihara's memory.