Chiune Sugihara - Righteous Among Nations (Part Two)

A Japanese Who Made a Difference for Israel

PART TWO

Khen Lim

(above) Chiune and family in front of the Japanese consulate with soldiers

Image source: collections.ushmm.org

This is the Part Two continuation of the story of Chiune Sugihara. We explore the sheer impact of the work of one man in saving thousands of Jews from certain death.


In the Thousands

It’s hard to get a final figure on the number of Jews Chiune Sugihara saved by virtue of what he and his wife did. A rough estimate of around 6,000 was mooted as a distinct possibility. Of these, quite a number were family visas, issued so that multiple people can travel on a single visa. If these are taken into account, then the figure would be even higher again.

According to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Chiune’s effort spared 6,000 Jews including also 40,000 descendants of Jewish descent; all because of the selflessness of one man who did far more than his country permitted him to or had tried to prevent him from doing. They would end up being endearingly referred to as ‘Sugihara’s Survivors.’

Chiune’s widow and eldest son placed the number closer to 10,000 Jews. Boston University professor and author Hillel Levine agreed to even if that number were plausible, tragically, far lesser numbers than that had ultimately survived. Levine, who wrote Chiune’s 1996 biography called ‘In Search of Sugihara,’ a total of 3,400 transit visas were issued by him to the Jews judging from what he could discover from Japan’s official foreign ministry documents.

Entitled, ‘Miscellaneous Documents Regarding Ethnic Issues: Jewish Affairs (Vol.10, 1940), the information had come from the Diplomatic Record Office of the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. From there, he uncovered a list of “2,139 names, largely of Poles – both Jews and non-Jews – who received visas between July 9 and August 31, 1940.” Having said that, it is entirely possible that many other visas might have been issued without the office being aware also such as those blank visas that Chiune and his wife threw out of their train window before their departure.

As Levine himself conceded, “It is far from complete; many who received visas from Sugihara, including children, are not on it.” Therefore the fact remains that Chiune could have aided in the escape of as many as ten thousand but that doesn’t mean that all of them had survived the exodus. Chiune himself would reflect in the years thereafter, saying, “No one ever said anything about it. I remember thinking that they probably didn’t realise how many I actually issued.”

Incidentally there are also reports that some Jesuits in Vilna had also made good use of the official consulate seal that Chiune had left behind, producing visas that paved the way for more Jews to escape. These would constitute some of the ‘forged visas’ issued under Chiune’s name that the Polish intelligentsia had spoken of.

With the arrangements that Chiune had made with Soviet Union, many of the Jewish refugees had travelled across to Vladivostok before embarking on a boat ride to Kobe, Japan where there existed a Russian Jewish enclave. To iron out whatever issues remaining, Tadeusz Romer, the Polish ambassador in Japan had expedited what remained that was needed to ensure safest possible passage.

In the period between August 1940 and November 1941, Chiune succeeded in providing transit visas in Japan as well as asylum visas to countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Burma, including immigration certificates to the British Mandate of Palestine. He also managed to grant immigrant visas to more than 2,000 Polish-Lithuanian Jews headed for America and also some selected South American countries who then eventually went on to either Kobe or Shanghai, China.

Some of those who stayed in Japan were apparently extradited to the Jewish quarter in Japanese-controlled Shanghai directly or via the Korean peninsula. There was also a group of thirty Jewish refugees called ‘Jakob Goldberg’ who arrived at Tsuruga and then shipped out to Nakhodka in Russia. Overall of the Jews in the Shanghai ghetto, 20,000 survived until the Japanese surrendered in 1945.

Post-War Downturns

(above) Chiune at the Kaunas Railway Station with well-wishers

Image source: collections.ushmm.org

The story had not ended well for the Japanese diplomat however. Firstly some of the Jews who had the good fortune of having received visas from Chiune ultimately failed to leave Lithuania in time. They were summarily captured by the Nazis around late June 1941 and lost their lives tragically in the Holocaust.

Chiune himself had gone on to serve as Consul-General in Prague, Czechoslovakia before being relocated to Königsberg in East Prussia in March 1941. From 1942 to 1944, he was attached to the legation in Bucharest, Romania. It was in the Romanian capital that he was captured and imprisoned together with his family by incoming Soviet troops.

Chiune and his family were incarcerated at a POW camp for eighteen months before they were then finally released in 1946 and returned to Japan via the Trans-Siberian Railway through the Soviet Union and on to the port of Nakhodka where ironically many of the Jewish refugees that he helped save had been through.  

But that wasn’t all there was for Chiune. A year following his return (1947), the Japanese Foreign Ministry requested he resign citing “downsizing” as the official reason but many, including his wife Yukiko, had long known that his dismissal was due to the unauthorised issuance of exit visas in Lithuania. Despite acting out of compassion and being humanitarian, it seemed the Japanese government had not shared his view or at least that was the opinion of many.

However the government had maintained the same position even up till October 1991 when the same ministry reiterated that his resignation had resulted from a post-war personnel review and shakeup. In March 2006, the Foreign Ministry reaffirmed, again, insisting that there was no disciplinary action exacted on Chiune. Some within the ministry had further suggested that he was one of many Japanese diplomats who resigned voluntarily even if it was impossible to verify. A few who knew what happened in Lithuania had, apparently, seen a report praising Chiune’s conduct, saying his actions were “courageous and humanitarian.”

(above) Transit visa issued by Chiune Sugihara

Image source: academicendeavors.net

Whatever the case might be, Chiune’s will was already broken. From a foreign diplomat with an illustrious career and one who had expressed his gallantry in saving the lives of thousands, he was reduced to menial jobs in order to support his family upon resettling in Fujisawa in the Kanagawa Prefecture. It was said that they had become so poor that he even canvassed light bulbs, going from house to house. In the year that he was forced to resign by the Foreign Ministry, his youngest son, Nobuki, died, aged seven. He was tragically impacted by this and had begun to suffer from depression.

He had also done a stint working as a part-time interpreter and translator but that didn’t last. Chiune then turned to an export company, working as the General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Again this too didn’t last long for whatever reason. With his doubtless proficiency in the Russian language, Chiune decided to depart on his own, leaving his family behind, to work in the Soviet Union for sixteen years. It was said that he was hired by a Japanese trading company for a low-key managerial position.

This forced estrangement from his family revealed a person not only heartbroken by the death of his young son but also by the manner in which he was indifferently treated upon his return. In that long stretch of years, Chiune could only manage to return and visit his family once or perhaps twice annually but not more than that.

Look for Part Three on November 14 2014