23. This Angel of Mercy Deliberately Failed an Exam to Thwart an Overbearing Father
Chiune Sugihara, was born into a middle-class Japanese family. His father was a civil servant who worked for Japan’s version of the IRS. Growing up, Sugihara hit the books hard, proved himself a model student, and received top honors. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but Sugihara had other ideas. So he deliberately failed to get into medical school by writing only his name on the entrance exam.
Instead of studying medicine, he majored in English in college, and in 1919, passed the Japanese Foreign Ministry Scholarship exams. Sugihara took a two-year break in 1920 to fulfill his national service obligations, serving as an infantry officer in the Japanese army. He resigned his commission in 1922, and took and passed the Foreign Ministry’s language qualification exams. He was then assigned to Harbin, China, where he further studied German and Russian.