“Sempo”
After he had granted about 1800 visas, authorities in Tokyo noticed the unusually large number of visas being issued from their consulate in Kovno – until then, a backwater of a diplomatic outpost that saw little consular activity. So the Foreign Ministry sent Sugihara a cable, reminding him: “You must make sure that they [refugees] have finished their procedure for their entry visas and also they must possess the travel money or the money that they need during their stay in Japan. Otherwise, you should not give them the transit visa“.
Although Japan’s Foreign Ministry insisted that visas be granted only to those who had gone through the appropriate immigration procedures and had adequate funds, most of those granted visas by Sugihara did not meet those criterion. In response to Tokyo’s cable, he acknowledged that had issued visas to people who had not satisfied all the requirements for transit or destination visas. However, he explained the extenuating circumstances: Japan was the only practical destination country for those headed towards the Americas, and visas from his consulate were needed for departure from the Soviet Union. Then, ignoring the Foreign Ministry’s demands that he stop cutting corners and stick to the rules, Sugihara continued issuing visas to and through Japan on his own.
By the norms of Japanese bureaucracy, and especially those of the Foreign Ministry, Sugihara’s disobedience and outright defiance of his superiors’ instructions were shocking. As desperate refugees crowded outside his consulate, he kept on issuing handwritten visas, spending up to 20 hours a day on the task, producing a month’s worth of visas every single day. He had the refugees call him “Sempo” – the Sino-Japanese reading of his name’s Japanese characters – because it was easier for them to pronounce than his given name. He also got in touch with Soviet officials, and convinced them to let the Jewish refugees travel across the USSR via the Trans Siberian Railway. When they balked, he overcame their intransigence by sweetening the deal for corrupt bureaucrats when necessary, arranging for the Jews to pay them five times the normal ticket price.
It finally came to an end on September 4th, 1940, when Sugihara had to leave because the consulate was about to close. He reportedly kept writing visas en route from his hotel to Kovno’s train station, and continued doing so on the train, throwing visas out the window into the crowd of desperate refugees. As the train began pulling away, he started throwing blank sheets out the window, that contained only his signature and the consulate’s seal, so they could be written over and turned into visas. His final words to the refugees were: “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best“.
Many of the refugees made it to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Jewish community. From there, most of them got asylum visas to Canada, Australia, Palestine, the US, and Latin America. It is estimated that Sugihara’s visas – including family visas that allowed multiple people to travel together – saved the lives of roughly 6000 Jews, and that about 40,000 of their descendants are alive today because of his actions. In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was named by the Israeli government as one of the “Righteous Among Nations” – an honorific used to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination. He is the only Japanese national to be so honored. He died a year later, in a hospital in Kamakura.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources & Further Reading
Art of Manliness – Lessons in Manliness: Chiune Sugihara
Jewish Virtual Library – Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986)
Times of Israel, January 4th, 2018 – Japan’s Schindler: A Genuine Hero Tangled in a Web of Myth