Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara (杉原 千畝) was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania.

During the Second World War, Sugihara helped thousands of Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his job and the lives of his family.

The fleeing Jews were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania.

Chiune Sugihara was born on 1 January 1900 (Meiji 33), in Mino, Gifu prefecture, to a middle-class father, Yoshimi Sugihara (杉原好水), and an upper-middle class mother, Yatsu Sugihara (杉原やつ).

When he was born, his father worked at a tax office in Kozuchi-town and his family lived in a borrowed temple, with the Buddhist temple Kyōsen-ji (教泉寺) where he was born nearby.

He was the second son among five boys and one girl.

His father and family moved into the tax office within the branch of the Nagoya Tax Administration Office one after another.

In 1903 his family moved to Asahi Village in Niu-gun, Fukui Prefecture.

In 1904 they moved to Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture.

On 25 October 1905, they moved to Nakatsu Town, Ena-gun, Gifu Prefecture.

In 1906 (Meiji 39) on 2 April, Chiune entered Nakatsu Town Municipal Elementary School (now Nakatsugawa City Minami Elementary School in Gifu Prefecture).

On 31 March 1907, he transferred to Kuwana Municipal Kuwana Elementary School in Mie Prefecture (currently Kuwana Municipal Nissin Elementary School).

In December of that same year, he transferred to Nagoya Municipal Furuwatari Elementary School (now Nagoya Municipal Heiwa Elementary School).

In 1912, he graduated with top honors from Furuwatari Elementary School and entered Aichi prefectural 5th secondary school (now Zuiryo high school), a combined junior and senior high school.

His father wanted him to become a physician, but Chiune deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only his name on the exam papers.

Instead, he entered Waseda University in 1918 (Taishō 7) and majored in English language.

At that time, he entered Yuai Gakusha, the Christian fraternity that had been founded by Baptist pastor Harry Baxter Benninghoff, to improve his English.

In 1919, he passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam.

From 1920 to 1922, Sugihara served in the Imperial Japanese Army as a second lieutenant with the 79th Infantry Regiment, stationed in Korea, then part of the Empire of Japan.

He resigned his commission in November 1922 and took the Foreign Ministry's language qualifying exams the following year, passing the Russian exam with distinction.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry recruited him and assigned him to Harbin, Manchuria, China, where he also studied the Russian and German languages and later became an expert on Russian affairs.

When Sugihara served in the Manchukuo (Manchurian) Foreign Office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union concerning the Northern Manchurian Railway.

During his time in Harbin, Sugihara married Klaudia Semionovna Apollonova and converted to Christianity (Russian Orthodox Church), using the baptismal name Sergei Pavlovich.

In 1934, Sugihara quit his post as Deputy Foreign Minister in Manchukuo in protest over Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese.

Sugihara and his wife divorced in 1935, before he returned to Japan, where he married Yukiko (1913–2008, ).

After the marriage; they had four sons - Hiroki, Chiaki, Haruki, and Nobuki.

As of 2021, Nobuki is the only surviving son and represents the Sugihara family.

Chiune Sugihara also served in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a translator for the Japanese delegation in Helsinki, Finland.

In 1939, Sugihara became a vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania.

His duties included reporting on Soviet and German troop movements, and to find out if Germany planned an attack on the Soviets and, if so, to report the details of this attack to his superiors in Berlin and Tokyo.

Sugihara had cooperated with Polish intelligence as part of a bigger Japanese–Polish cooperative plan.

In Lithuania, Sugihara started using the Sino-Japanese reading "Sempo" for his given name, since it was easier to pronounce than "Chiune".

As the Soviet Union occupied sovereign Lithuania in 1940, many Jewish refugees from Poland (Polish Jews) as well as Lithuanian Jews tried to acquire exit visas.

Without the visas, it was dangerous to travel, yet it was impossible to find countries willing to issue them.

Hundreds of refugees came to the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, trying to get a visa to Japan.

At the time, on the brink of the war, Lithuanian Jews made up one third of Lithuania's urban population and half of the residents of every town.

In 1985, the State of Israel honored Sugihara as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for his actions.

He is the only Japanese national to have been so honored.

In Lithuania, 2020 was "The Year of Chiune Sugihara".

It has been estimated as many as 100,000 people alive today are the descendants of the recipients of Sugihara visas.