10/29/2018
“Even a hunter cannot kill a bird that flies to him for refuge.”
—Samurai warrior saying that inspired Sugihara to save
thousands of Jewish refugees in Lithuania in World War II
A recent New York Times article told the story of Chiune Sugihara (1900–1986), a diplomat who ran the Japanese consulate in Lithuania in 1939 during the outbreak of World War II. Thousands of Jews in German-occupied Poland fled to neighboring Lithunia, where they sought visas to travel through Japan and other destinations. The Japanese embassy refused to give Sugihara permission to issue the visas, but he defied his government and issued them anyway.
Sugihara worked day and night issuing the visas, which involved countless hours of handwriting. “He issued as many visas in a day as would normally be issued in a month,” says the article. “His wife, Yukiko, massaged his hands at night, aching from the constant effort.”
When Japan finally closed down its embassy in 1940, Sugihara continued to write visas that had no legal standing but worked because of the seal of the government and his name. With the consulate closed, Sugihara gave the consulate stamp to a refugee to forge more visas, and he literally threw visas out of the train window to refugees on the platform.
Sugihara issued at least 6,000 visas for people to travel through Japan to other destinations. In some cases whole families traveled on a single visa. After the war, the government fired him. By some estimates, over 40,000 people are alive today because of Sugihara.
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo calls this kind of extraordinary moral courage the “heroic imagination.” In a 1977 interview, Sugihara was asked why he did it. “I told the Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was a matter of humanity. I did not care if I lost my job.” Sugihara’s son said of his father, “He was a very simple man. He never thought what he did was notable or unusual.”
