Sugihara Chiune, is one of the lesser known heroes during World War II and the Holocaust. Although Japan was technically Germanyâs ally during the War, Sugihara used his status and unique position to help refugees and those of Jewish descent escape from behind enemy lines. He also represents a fairly different image of a Japanese person during this time in terms of his deeds and personal convictions. Even today the Empire of Japan is usually portrayed as a monolithic body of fervent and usually brutal zealots working for the glory of Japan. While itâs very common to hear about Europeans helping the Jews escape, rarely does one hear about the Japanese or Chinese contribution to helping the Jews. It is estimated that Sugihara saved between 6,000 and 10,000+ Jews from the Holocaust. He was honored by the state of Israel for his deeds as Righteous Among the Nations.
Sugihara Chiune was born in 1900, his parents were fairly high up - his mother being upper-middle class which is equal to the samurai class. His father wanted him to be a doctor but he purposefully failed the exam. He became involved in diplomacy, working for Japanâs government in the time leading up to the Second World War. He was eventually given a position in Harbin, China to deal with Russian diplomacy. He studied Russian and German and became an expert in Russian affairs. Mostly, that involved trying to keep the peace between Russia and Japan as they squabbled over Manchuria.
He later worked trying to keep the peace between the Soviet Union and Japan as Japan inched into China and worked on the Chinese Far East Railway, which linked Russia to Siberia to China to Manchuria and into Korea. Because the railway linked to various ports and harbors (the ones not coated in deep ice), Japan and Russia fought over who would have control of the line. Eventually it bounced back and forth and today the Railway is the property of China proper.
While Sugihara was in Harbin, China he converted to Eastern Orthodox, a denomination of Christianity which came about when the Roman Catholic Church split from Byzantium (present-day Istanbul). As an aside, Eastern Orthodox is what gives rise to Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox and so while many of the Western European nations tend to be more Catholic, many Eastern European nations like Russia, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Hungary etc. tend to be more Orthodox. Sugiharaâs conversion is seen as strange for the Japanese who have no official religion.
While attempting to keep the peace between China, the Soviet Union and Japan, Sugihara resigns as the Deputy Foreign Minister of Manchuria because the Japanese treat the Chinese so poorly - saying they treated them like animals. This is seen as a bit strange because in the Japanese hierarchy, especially the government, youâre told to follow your orders without complaint. This is all leading up to the Second Sino-Japanese War over Manchuria. If you want to read more about the Japanese Empire and Manchuria during WWII, my other post on that is HERE.
He marries twice, his first marriage to a Russian woman which ends in divorce, his second to a Japanese woman named Sugihara Yukiko. When Sugihara converts to Orthodox Christianity, he takes on the Baptismal name of âPavel Sergeyevichâ which is sometimes written as Pavel Sergeivich or Paul Sergius. Yukikoâs Baptismal name becomes âMaryâ sometimes written as âMariaâ. She is said to have been attracted to him because he treated her as an equal, whereas Japanese society was very sexist and didnât afford Japanese women the same privileges as men.
He is appointed the vice-consul of Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. His job was to handle the embassy to Japan in Lithuania and also he worked to monitor Soviet and German forces. The reason for that is Japan was allied to Germany in name only and Japan was said to have been working with Poland for a contingency plan against the Germans.Â
As many Lithuanian people and Polish people ended up displaced in the Second World War began, many citizens wanted visas to get to Japan and be out of the crossfires. Many of the refugees were from Poland (which fell to Nazi Germany) as well as many Lithuanians who feared Nazi Germany would move into their land. The process of obtaining a Japanese visa required proper immigration procedures and funds to cover the fees. This was difficult for most of the refugees since they hadnât had time to file all their paperwork and many were poor either from the economy or from having to go on the run.
Sugihara now faced a dilemma because he could turn his back on the refugees as Japanese policy demanded or he could skirt the law. He knew that if he left them behind, many of them would fall victim to the Germans, either being caught in the crossfire between German and Soviet forces or because many of them were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry and so they would be sent to the concentration camps. He had a crisis of faith where his duty as a Japanese diplomat was to ignore them but the Christian doctrine tells you that if someone is in danger and you can help them, you help them. He consulted with his family and his wife told him he should help them so they began issuing visas because they knew it was the right thing to do.
Keep in mind, these are the days before computers, so he had to write the visas by hand. Many of them were travel visas, which is just a fancy way of saying that they could be used for multiple people (typically families) instead of individual visas. This was smart because it not only cut down on how much he had to write, but it also left many children undeclared, so in the event that one family unit should happen be stopped by officials for whatever reason, some of the family could then pretend to be from someone elseâs family and slip by. It wasnât entirely uncommon for parents who were detained to give their children to trusted people to look after them.
He brokered passage with the Soviets for the Jewish families. Keep in mind that European society in general didnât care for the Jews and they hadnât for many centuries; in Medieval times when the Black Plague was blamed on Jews poisoning the water. In short, the Soviets had no more love for Jews than the Nazis; the only difference was the Soviets just oppressed the Jews, they didnât round them up and send them off to death camps. Also keep in mind that the Japanese and the Soviets were technically enemies and that Sugihara was a vice-consul which is very low on the hierarchical totem pole which limited his ability to make things happen by himself. The Soviets agreed to let the Jews pass for five times the normal train fare.
He and his wife spent 18-20 hour days writing travel visas by hand for the refugees. This went on from about July 18th to August 28th, 1940. The embassy was about to be closed down so he continued to work until he was forced to leave the embassy. He continued writing visas until September 4th, when he had to leave by train. It is said as the train was leaving he threw multiple written visas out of the window for the people seeing him off. Finally when he could write no more, he threw blank sheets of paper out of the window with his signature and the seal from the consulate for them to write in their own visas, apologizing for not being able to write anymore.
Itâs unclear how many people were saved because of the sheer number of travel visas he wrote and the nature of the travel visa to include multiple people. Itâs also said that Sugihara left behind his seal so that even after the embassy had closed, people could forge visas under his name. 5,580 visas were made officially which means at least 6,000 people were saved but due to forgeries and the nature of the visas, itâs probable the number is much higher. The enigmatic nature of the travel visa also makes it hard to give Sugihara the credit he deserves for having saved so many people, but Sugiharaâs methods helped save more people than wouldâve been possible otherwise.
After leaving Lithuania, Sugihara continued to work in consulates in Prague (Czechoslovakia), Bucharest (Romania) and in Prussia but when the Soviets occupied Romania in 1944, he was placed under arrest until 1946 because he was a Japanese official.
Many of the people he helped took the Far East Railway to Vladivostok, Russia where they then caught boats or ferries to Japan. The Russian embassies and consulates in Japan then helped many of the Jews relocate to places that were willing to take the Jews with asylum visas - specifically Canada, Australia, Shanghai and other places. Many of the refugee Jews from Europe found places to stay in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Shanghai, China and so they were typically called the Argentinean Ghetto and the Shanghai Ghetto. Ghetto is an old Italian word originating in Venice, the Venetian Ghetto was the part of the city the Jews and the Gypsies/Roma lived.
After Sugihara was released, he was let go by the Japanese government - officially because the management and logistics of Japanâs infrastructure was altered after the war but Sugiharaâs wife claimed it was because of his insubordination in Lithuania. After that, Sugihara worked multiple menial jobs for very little money, at one point selling light bulbs. He then moved back to the Soviet Union, living a very low-key life until the 60s and 70s. He received the honor of Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in the 80s but was too ill to go himself - being in his eighties - so his wife received the award on his behalf.
Most of Japan had no idea of the impact of Sugiharaâs efforts until his death in 1986 when various Jewish delegates and the Israeli ambassador arrived at the funeral - strange for an average joe to get so much attention. Once that story broke, Sugiharaâs name was spread through the media.
As for the Japanese reaction to the Jews during WWII, it was a bit ambivalent. Although Nazi Germany had demanded that the Japanese (who had so many refugee Jews in their control, especially in the Shanghai Ghetto which was under Japanese control) the Japanese never handed them over. Some have speculated that it was because the Japanese didnât care about Germany which makes a bit of sense because Japan only allied with Germany for the sake of its own Empire. Others say that Japan wanted the Jews there because they could be used against the Germans as allies if they ever had to come to blows. Still others say that theyâd heard the stereotypes that the Jews were all wealthy and were skilled bankers so having a bunch of grateful citizens in the Empire of Japan with money would enrich the Empire.
But the explanation that holds the most water is that the Japanese just didnât care about Germany. The Jews were hated by the Aryan supremacists because they were said to be of a lesser race - short and dark-skinned - which is how the Aryans viewed Asians too. The white supremacist policies of Nazi Germany probably made it so that the Japanese werenât really that cooperative in general with the Nazis because, like the Jews, Asians and Japanese thought of as were a âlesser raceâ. Added to that, Japan and Germany were allies in name only and had very little contact during the war itself; Germanyâs goals were of no importance to the Japanese Empireâs goals. All that mattered was that Germany played its part.
Sugiharaâs legacy is much less known than most of those who helped the Jews or resisted the Nazis, likely because it never really came to light until the 80s but itâs the subject of many stories and movies including the biography written by Sugiharaâs wife Yukiko called âVisas for Lifeâ.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity, Sugihara is portrayed as a saint. Pictured above is the typical icon of Sugihara who is sometimes known as Sempo - the Chinese translation of the characters of his name. Although he was never canonized - which is the way someone gets declared a saint - itâs popular opinion that heâs a saint, sort of like Mother Teresa.Â
For more information on Sugihara Chiune you can check out this biography, which is where I got the icon. It has a much more personal biography of Suighara than I could do including things like notes on his first marriage and why there was a divorce etc. And that is HERE.
The wikipeda article of Sugihara Chiune is HERE which is a bit of an overview like I did.
The Russian Orthodox Church has an article on him HERE.
There was a movie based on Sugihara Chiune called âVisas for Virtueâ with Chris Tashima and Susan Fukuda, if you want to watch a movie.
The book that Sugihara Yukiko wrote is called Visas for Life. There are other stories about Sugihara Chiune like Passage to Freedom: The Sugihara Story by Ken Mochizuki and there are also books on the Japanese and the Jews, the most well-known would beThe Fugu Plan by Marvin Tokayer.
I really like the book Sugihara Yukiko wrote, partly because itâs a good read and partly because she was there so itâs a bit more credible and personal than a normal biography or history book.
Rebloggeg from Asianhistory at:Â http://asianhistory.tumblr.com/post/43344320512/sugihara-chiune-is-one-of-the-lesser-known-heroes
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