Sugihara Chiune

Sugihara, Chiune Sempo Chiune Sempo Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat, was born in 1900, in Yaotsu, Japan. In 1919, while studying at Waseda University he was recruited by the Japanese Foreign Ministry and sent to study Russian at a language institute in Harbin, China. He became an expert of Russian affairs. In November 1939, Sugihara was posted to the Japanese consulate in Kovno, the capital of the then independent Lithuanian republic. In August 1940, the Soviet authorities, who had occupied and annexed Lithuania that summer, ordered all foreign representatives to close their legations. While busy with packing and winding up operations in Kovno, he noticed a huge crowd in front of the consulate. Upon inquiry, he discovered that they were Jews who were begging for Japanese transit visas to allow them to proceed by way of the USSR and Japan to the Dutch colonies of Surinam and the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, where no entry permit was necessary. Sugihara ignored his government’s instructions to issue visas on a limited scale and issued several thousand visas to any Jews who came to the consulate. “I may have to disobey the government” he told his wife, “But if I don’t, I would be disobeying God.” Until the Soviet Union closed down the consulate, Sugihara issued transit visas to Japan, enabling thousands of Jews to leave Lithuania and travel via the Soviet Union and Japan to various destinations. Zorah Wahrhaftig, Israel’s former Minister of Religion, was among those refugees helped by Sugihara. After the closure of the consulate in Kovno, Sugihara served at the consulates in Prague, in Koenigsberg, and then at the Legation in Romania where he remained until the liberation. Upon his return to Japan in 1947, he was asked to resign, according to Sugihara’s testimony, for ignoring government orders in Lithuania. After his resignation from the Foreign Ministry, Sugihara supported his family by working for an export company. Sugihara died on July 31, 1986. On October, 4, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Chiune Sempo Sugihara as Righteous Among the Nations.