Sugihara’s List  Andrea L. Rademan 3/2003

"What is unique about Sugihara was that he and his wife were risking their lives and future careers. But when asked why he did it, Sugihara said, 'I did what we as human beings should do.'"

– former Vice President Walter Mondale, U.S. Ambassador to Japan

Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara was an unassuming hero. During World War II, over a period of weeks, he saved thousands of refugees from otherwise certain death under the Nazis. He did this on his own, without hesitation or fanfare, and with no expectation of thanks or even recognition. He did it because he was a man of principle and peace who could not stand by while others perished.

The seeds of Sugihara's heroism were sown far from Japan when, in 1933, the Nazis established the first concentration camp, Dachau, as a detention center for political prisoners, Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade unionists. They also persecuted authors and artists whose works they considered subversive or who were Jewish, as well as gypsies, Poles and other Slavs, intellectuals, high-level Soviet state and Communist Party officials, Catholic priests and any Christian church leaders who opposed Nazism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the mentally and physically handicapped, male homosexuals and individuals accused of "asocial" or criminal behavior.

Hitler's goal was to acquire a vast empire of "living space" (Lebensraum) in Eastern Europe. He started World War II by invading Poland on September 1, 1939. Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. On April 9, 1940, German forces invaded Norway and Denmark and in May 1940, Germany began its assault on Western Europe. The Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States in June 1940 and annexed them in August 1940. Italy, an Axis member, joined the war in June 1940. From August 13 to October 31, 1940, the Nazis waged an air war, known as the Battle of Britain, over England.

After invading Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, in direct violation of the German-Soviet Pact. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin became a major wartime allied leader, along with U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. As the world spiraled out of control, more nations were drawn into the conflict. On December 7, 1941, Japan (one of the Axis powers) bombed Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. The United States reacted by declaring war on Japan. Four days later, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

Beginning with the 1942 American landing in North Africa, the Allies achieved a number of military successes. On February 2, 1943, the German Sixth Army surrendered to the Soviets at Stalingrad. In September, the Allies invaded Italy, which surrendered on September 8, though Mussolini set up a Fascist regime in northern Italy. German forces then invaded northern Italy, and advanced southward to meet Allied forces, holding northern Italy until May 1945. †

On June 6, 1944 (D Day), 250,000 Allied soldiers landed in France, which they liberated by the end of August. Allied air forces attacked Nazi industrial plants. The Soviets began an offensive on January 12, 1945, and liberated Poland and Hungary. In mid-February 1945, the Allies bombed Dresden, and nearly 100,000 civilians were killed.

On April 29, Hitler committed suicide. Berlin was captured by Soviet forces in early May 1945 and the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945. In August, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 120,000 civilians. The war in the Pacific ended when Japan formally surrendered on September 2.

World War II had cost an estimated 55 million deaths worldwide.

From this whirlpool of madness, a few unsung heroes emerged. Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara was one of them. Born on January 1, 1900, Sugihara was the son of a middle-class family in Yaotsu, in Japan's Gifu Prefecture, north of Nagoya. He is also called "Sempo" as an alternative and simpler reading of the Japanese characters for "Chiune," his given name. 

Sugihara graduated from the exclusive Harbin Gakuin, Japan's training center for experts on the Soviet Union. As the director of the foreign ministry in Manchukuo, a puppet state Japan had established in Manchuria under Japanese supervision, Sugihara negotiated the purchase of the North Manchurian railroad from the Soviet Union in 1932.

Because he was fluent in Russian, which he had learned during 16 years in Harbin, Manchuria, he was posted to the Lithuanian capital, Kovno, in November 1939. His orders were to gather intelligence on Soviet and German troop movements in the region.

In early August of 1940, a representative of the Jewish Agency Palestine Office in Lithuania approached Sugihara and asked him to grant Japanese transit visas to Polish Jewish refugees stranded in Kovno. Under the plan the refugees would travel to the Dutch-controlled island of Curacao in the Caribbean, where no entry permit was necessary, by way of the USSR and Japan. The Soviets had made their approval of the plan conditional on the refugees obtaining transit visas from Japan.

Sugihara requested permission from his government to participate in this rescue plan. Though the Japanese government rejected the proposal, Sugihara decided to grant such visas to any Jewish refugees who requested them. In doing so, Sugihara saved thousands of Jews in just a few weeks, including many rabbinical students from the famed Mir academy. By the time Sugihara left Lithuania he had issued visas to 2,140 persons. These visas also covered some 300 others, mostly children.

After the Soviet authorities removed all foreign consulates, Sugihara was reassigned to Prague in Bohemia and then to Bucharest, Romania, Germany's ally, where he remained until after the end of the war. During the victorious Soviet army's march though the Balkans in 1944; the Soviets arrested Sugihara together with other diplomats from enemy nations. They held him and his family, under fairly benign conditions, for the next three years. When Sugihara returned to Japan in 1947, he was asked to submit his resignation for his actions against Japanese policy and the Foreign Ministry retired him with a small pension. Sugihara held a variety of jobs after the war including one for a Japanese trading company in Moscow from 1960 to 1975.

A year before he died in 1986, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, Israel, honored Sugihara with the title "Righteous Among the Nations" for his aid to the refugees in Lithuania during World War II. There is an exhibit honoring Sugihara at Washington's Holocaust Museum, which serves as a research facility for scholars, teachers, students and visitors who want to learn more about the history of the Holocaust. THE HOLOCAUST MUSEUM, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, DC (www.ushmm.org). Info: tickets.com or (800) 400-9373.

READ MORE ABOUT SUGIHARA AND THE HOLOCAUST

Goodman, David G. and Masanori Miyazawa. Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural Stereotype. New York: Free Press, 1995. Sugihara's rescue efforts as a contrast to the stereotyped treatment of Jews in Japanese culture and government policy during World War II. Recounts Sugihara's memorialization in Japan, particularly in the context of Japanese-Jewish relations.

Halter, Marek. Stories of Deliverance: Speaking with Men and Women who rescued Jews from the Holocaust Chicago: Open Court, 1998. Includes interviews with two individuals saved due to Sugihara's intervention and interviews with Sugihara's wife and son.

Kaye, Ira. The Holes in the Net: Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust, 1940-1945, Volume 5: Japan. Chevy Chase, Md.: I. Kaye, 1992. Details Sugihara's activities in Kovno and the treatment Jewish refugees received in many Japanese cities where they found temporary refuge and sometimes-permanent homes.

Levine, Hillel. In Search of Sugihara: The Elusive Japanese Diplomat who risked his Life to Rescue 10,000 Jews From the Holocaust. New York: Free Press, 1996. Explores the motives for his rescue efforts and significant events in early twentieth century Japanese history.

Mochizuki, Ken, and Dom Lee. Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story. New York: Lee & Low Books, 1997. Tells Sugihara's story from the perspective of his 5-year-old-son, Hiroki. Written for young adults.

Sakamoto, Pamela Rotner. Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees: A World War II Dilemma. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1998. Explores how and why other Japanese, including diplomats, ship captains and immigration officials, complied with these rescue efforts.

Saul, Eric. Visas For Life: The Remarkable Story of Chiune & Yukiko Sugihara and the Rescue of Thousands of Jews. San Francisco: Holocaust Oral History Project, 1995. Based on a photographic exhibit, "Visas for Life", on display at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance and the California State Capitol.

Tokayer, Marvin, and Mary Swartz. The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews During World War II. New York: Weatherhill, 1996.

Interweaves the story of Sugihara with the efforts by other Japanese military and governmental officials to create a "safe haven" for Jewish refugees in Asia during the Holocaust.

In Japanese: Sugihara, Yukiko. Rokusennin no inochi no biza. Tokyo: Asahi Sonorama, 1990. A personal account, written by his wife. Also relates the details of their life following the war. English Translation: Visas for Life. San Francisco: Edu-Comm Plus, 1995.

If you would like to read the remarkable account of the Sugihara's experience as told from the viewpoint of Chiune's wife, Yukiko, Sushi & Tofu is proud to present the hardcover edition of Visa's For Life, by Yukiko Sugihara, translated by their son Hiroki Sugihara. Yukiko's sensitive and insightful account gives us a glimpse of the complicated and difficult lives the Sugiharas endured during the world's darkest hour. Beginning next month, we will begin excerpting passages from this book. However, if you would like to purchase one for yourself, or as a gift, please see our insert at the right of this article.