Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara (杉原 千畝, Sugihara Chiune; 1 January 1900 – 31 July 1986) 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 career 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.

Lithuania declared the year 2020 as "The Year of Chiune Sugihara" in his honor. Today, the estimated number of descendants of those who received "Sugihara visas" ranges between 40,000 and 100,000.

In 2021, a street in Jerusalem was dedicated in his honor.

Early life and education

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, Sugihara Yoshimi), and an upper-middle class mother, Yatsu Sugihara (杉原やつ, Sugihara Yatsu). 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.

Manchurian Foreign Office

When Sugihara served in the Manchukuo (Manchurian) Foreign Office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union concerning the Northern Manchurian Railway. Sugihara was said to be the best Russian-speaker in the Japanese government, according to Australian translator Roger Pulvers, and negotiated an agreement favourable to Japan with the Soviet Union which allowed Japan’s Northern Manchurian Railway's expansion.

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 Kikuchi (1913–2008). They had four sons – Hiroki, Chiaki, Haruki, and Nobuki. As of 2025, Nobuki is the only surviving son and represents the Sugihara family at numerous ceremonies worldwide.

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.

Lithuania

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".

Jewish refugees

As the Soviet Union occupied sovereign Lithuania in 1940, many Polish and Lithuanian Jews fearing persecution tried to acquire exit visas. While under Soviet occupation, it was announced that many foreign consulates in Kaunas would soon be closed. Per the Holocaust researcher and historian David Kranzler, Dutch national Nathan Gutwirth asked the Dutch Ambassador to the Baltic states, L. P. J. de Dekker, for a travel visa. Per the granddaughter of another Dutch national Peppy Sterinheim Lewin made the request. Either one or both of the above sought to reach Curaçao, then a Dutch colony, with subsequent plans to reach the United States. Dekker was operating out of the Dutch consulate in Riga, Latvia. They were informed that no visa would be required, but travelers were instead required to obtain permission from the governor to land. Gutwirth or Lewin convinced de Dekker to issue the travel document with the second phrase omitted, instead only indicating that no visa was required. The island had been providing fuel via its oil refineries to Allied forces, and was unwilling to let in immigrants from enemy territories.

Dekker requested and authorized the Dutch honorary consul Jan Zwartendijk to issue the same text to Jews in Kovno who wished to escape from Lithuania. In the period between 16 July and 3 August 1940, Jan Zwartendijk provided over 2,200 Jews with similar notations in their passports.

In June 1940, as Italy entered the war, exit routes via the Mediterranean Sea were closed. The Committee in Greater Germany, forced to seek new outlets for emigration, arranged for the transportation of Jews from Germany across Europe and Asia (via the Trans-Siberian Railway) to Vladivostok, and then to Japan. From Japan the refugees were to embark for destinations in the Western Hemisphere.

Although the Soviet Union began offering citizenship to those living in occupied Lithuania, some instead still wished to emigrate—principally rabbis, yeshiva students, members of the intellectual classes and leaders of various Jewish communal and labor organizations. Travel visas to Japan were initially granted without much difficulty, and the JDC, in collaboration with a number of other American Jewish groups, contributed toward the funds required for the Trans-Siberian trip to Japan of 1,700 persons.

In July of 1940, Jewish refugees from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, and other countries began arriving in Japan at Tsuruga, Shimonoseki and Kobe. Japanese embassies and consulates except Kaunas issued 3,448 Japanese transit visas from January 1940 to March 1941. Nearly half of the recipients held valid end-visas and immediately departed Japan.

The number of Jewish refugees who came to Japan, as seen in Table 1, has been documented as 4,500, 5,000 or 6,000. The 552 persons noted in the second row of the table do not match the number of departing persons edited by Jewcom. The Siberian railway had been closed and no evidence supporting this figure is found in JDC annual reports or MOFA documents. For the 200 persons described in Note 1 of Table 1, there is a document in the Archives of MOFA that the Japanese consulate of Vladivostok transferred about 50 Jewish refugees who had been stranded in Vladivostok to Shanghai with Soviet Union cargo on 26 April 1941.

Sugihara's Visas

At the time, the Japanese government required that Japanese transit visas be issued only to those who had gone through appropriate immigration procedures, had enough funds and an onward final destination. Most of the refugees did not fulfill these criteria. Sugihara dutifully contacted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time, the Ministry responded that anybody granted a visa should be in possession of a destination visa to an onward country beyond Japan, without exception.