Refused by Tokyo, a vice-consul in Lithuania wrote visas by hand until the train pulled away.
In the summer of 1940, a crowd gathered at the gates of a small Japanese consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. Most were Jewish refugees who had fled the German invasion of Poland. The Soviets had just occupied Lithuania, and every door out of Europe was closing. What they needed was a piece of paper: a Japanese transit visa that would let them cross the Soviet Union and reach Japan. The one man who could sign it was the vice-consul, Chiune Sugihara.
He cabled Tokyo for permission and was refused. Then, with his wife Yukiko's support, he went ahead anyway. For weeks he wrote visas by hand, hundreds a day, until the consulate was shut. Those visas let about six thousand people escape. Seven years later his government let him go. Israel honoured him 45 years after that summer, a year before his death.
From Gifu to Kaunas and back
The lifeline
1900
Born 1 January in Gifu Prefecture, central Japan. His father wanted him to become a doctor
1919
Wins a Foreign Ministry scholarship and is sent to Harbin, China, to learn Russian
1939
Posted to Kaunas, Lithuania, to open a consulate and report on German and Soviet troop movements
1940
Turned down by Tokyo, he hand-writes transit visas for refugees anyway
1947
Back from Soviet internment, he is pushed out of the Foreign Ministry
1986
Dies 31 July in Kamakura, a year after Israel honours him
By the numbers
The measure of a summer
2,139
Visas listed on the record he sent to Tokyo. Many covered a whole family
~6,000
The usual estimate of how many people his visas let escape
3
Cables to Tokyo asking permission, as his family remembered it. Each answer was no
45 yrs
From the summer of 1940 until Israel named him Righteous Among the Nations in 1985
What he did
The deeds
1932–35
The railway talks. Working for Japan-controlled Manchukuo, he helped negotiate the purchase of the North Manchurian Railway from the Soviet Union. He resigned in 1934, objecting to how Chinese people were being treated.
1939
Kaunas. As vice-consul he opened Japan's consulate in Lithuania's then capital, a listening post between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.
Jul–Aug 1940
The visas. Tokyo told him to issue visas only to people with an onward destination and enough money. He wrote them anyway, many for refugees whose only destination was a "Curaçao" note from the Dutch consul, Jan Zwartendijk.
Sep 1940
The last signatures. Survivors recalled him writing visas in his hotel and then at Kaunas station, passing papers through the window as his train left for Berlin.
1940–41
The road out. Visa holders crossed the USSR on the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok, sailed to Tsuruga in Japan, and went on from Kobe. Many ended up in Shanghai. The Mir Yeshiva got out almost whole, students and teachers alike.
Dismissed, then remembered
Recognition
In his lifetime
Held for about 18 months in Soviet camps after the war, with his family
Asked to resign in 1947. The ministry said it was cutting staff
Sold light bulbs door to door, then spent years working for a trading firm in Moscow
Survivors searched for him for decades. Many knew him only as "Sempo"
Today
Named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1985, the only Japanese person to be honoured this way
Japan's Foreign Minister publicly honoured him in 2000 and unveiled a plaque at the Diplomatic Archives
His old consulate in Kaunas is now Sugihara House, a museum
A memorial hall stands in Yaotsu, Gifu, near where he was born
The place that tested him
Kaunas, 1940
At the time Kaunas was Lithuania's provisional capital. It had become a refuge for Jews who fled Poland in 1939, until it, too, became a trap. When Soviet troops marched in that June, foreign missions were told to close. Sugihara's consulate was one of the last ways out still open.
Jun 1940
The Soviet Union occupies Lithuania. Foreign consulates are ordered to shut
2 consuls
Sugihara and the Dutch consul Zwartendijk, whose papers gave refugees a place to say they were going
Japan
The country his transit visas let refugees reach, after crossing the whole Soviet Union
"It is the kind of sentiment anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes."
— Chiune Sugihara, recalling 1940
