Honoring Japanese Diplomat Chiune Sugihara for Saving Jews in Lithuania During WWII

As I walked through Little Tokyo in Los Angeles on the way to seeing a performance of the musical “Allegiance” at the Aratani Theatre (located in the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center), I was startled to see a life-size and lifelike statue of a Japanese man in a suit holding out a small flat object. Stopping to investigate this statue and the accompanying plaque and information, I learned that this was a tribute to the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara and that the small flat object held out in his hand was a visa.

As Jaweed Kaleem said in his Huffington Post article “Chiune Sugihara, Japan Diplomat Who Saved 6,000 Jews During Holocaust, Remembered”:

Most Americans know of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,200 lives during the Holocaust by hiring Jews to work in his factories and fought Nazi efforts to remove them.

Fewer know about Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who disobeyed his government’s orders and issued visas that allowed 6,000 Jews to escape from Nazi-occupied territories via Japan.

What I found particularly compelling in Kaleem’s article (found via an internet search for articles about Sugihara) was the quote from Anne Akabori, who wrote a biography of Sugihara — THE GIFT OF LIFE.

Kaleem quotes author Anne Akabori saying:

And it’s been so important for the Japanese people to know there was a person who did whatever he could to lessen the Japanese involvement in the war. He was always for peace.

The reason I found this so compelling is that the musical I was en route to see — “Allegiance” — deals with the internment of Japanese men, women and children living on the West Coast in U.S. government detention centers as well as the Japanese young men who eventually won the right to join the U.S. Army fighting in Europe in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.*

In 1940 Sugihara became the Japanese consul general to Lithuania. Kaleem wrote:

As Nazis threatened to invade Lithuania, thousands of Jews surrounded the Japanese consulate and asked for visas to escape. Disobeying his bosses in Japan, Sugihara issued thousands. From July 31 to Aug. 28, 1940, Sugihara and his wife [Yukiko] stayed up all night, writing visas.

The Japanese government closed the consulate, located in Kovno. But even as Sugihara’s train was about to leave the city, he kept writing visas from his open window. When the train began moving, he gave the visa stamp to a refugee to continue the job.

What is also moving is this information in Kaleem’s article:

Chiune Sugihara, who worked odd jobs after returning to Japan and later was employed by a trading company in Russia, worked in obscurity and never spoke of the visas. He never knew if anything came of them and survivors had no luck finding him. But in 1968, a survivor who had become an Israeli diplomat, Joshua Nishri, finally made contact.

The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center has artifacts from Sugihara as part of its permanent collection, and Sugihara’s wife Yukiko Sugihara wrote a book about the rescue titled VISAS FOR LIFE.

Read Kaleem’s entire Huffington Post article on Chiune Sugihara.

In addition, in light of my blog post “Are We All Complicit in School Shootings?” this quote in Kaleem’s article from the grandson of a man saved by a Sugihara visa is very relevant:

 “Most people have this idea that you can’t really help the whole world, so what’s the point?” said Mark Salomon. But Sugihara showed that “whatever you are doing with yourself, you are having a much broader impact. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees, but it’s important in every aspect of your life to remember you are having an effect and to make it a positive effect.”

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*According to Wikipedia:

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team is an infantry regiment of the United States Army, part of the Army Reserve. The regiment was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II. Most of the families of mainland Japanese Americans were confined to internment camps in the United States interior. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in Europe during World War II, in particular Italy, southern France, and Germany.

The 442nd Regiment was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare. The 4,000 men who initially made up the unit in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, earning 9,486 Purple Hearts. The unit was awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations (five earned in one month). Twenty-one of its members were awarded Medals of Honor. Its motto was “Go for Broke.”

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