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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.
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.
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).Masha Leon: " "Remembering Yukiko Sugihara", forward.com 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. Anne Frank au Pays du Manga – Diaporama : Le Fils du Juste , Arte, 2012
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.
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".
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.David Kranzler - The Grand Escape from Lithuania To Japan (The Jewish Observer, June 2000) 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. JACAR.B04013208900, I-0881/0244 Japanese embassies and consulates except Kaunas issued 3,448 Japanese transit visas from January 1940 to March 1941.JACAR.B04013209400,I-0882/0102 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,Marthus, Jurgen " Jewish Responses to Persecution vol. III 1941–1942" p. 43 5,000
or 6,000.Watanabe, Katsumasa (2000). 真相・杉原ビザ The (in Japanese), Tokyo: Taisyo Syuppan The 552 persons noted in the second row of the table do not match the number of departing persons edited by Jewcom.Jewcom. " Emigration from Japan, July 1940 – November 1941" 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.JACAR.B04013209600,0882/0245
Being aware that applicants were in danger if they stayed behind, Sugihara decided to ignore his orders and, from July 18 to August 28, 1940, he issued over 2100 transit visas. Given his inferior post and the culture of the Japanese Foreign Service bureaucracy, this was an unusual act of disobedience. He spoke to Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel through the country via the Trans-Siberian Railway. His wife Yukiko who supported and encouraged him later recalled, "My husband and I talked about the visas before he issued them. We understood that both the Japanese and German governments disagreed with our ideas, but we went ahead anyhow."
Sugihara continued to hand-write visas, reportedly spending 18 to 20 hours a day on them, producing a normal month's worth of visas each day, until September 4, 1940, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time, he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of whom were heads of households and thus permitted to take their families with them. It is claimed that before he left, he handed the official consulate stamp to a refugee so that more visas could be forged.Wolpe, David. " The Japanese Man Who Saved 6,000 Jews With His Handwriting."" New York Times. 15 October 2018. 15 October 2018. His son, Nobuki Sugihara, adamantly insisted in an interview with Ann Curry that his father never gave the stamp to anyone.Interview with Ann Curry on 22 May 2019 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit from his hotel and after boarding the train at Kaunas railway station, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out of the train's window even as the train pulled out. His son Hiroki noted, "my father continued to pen visas even at the railway station, throwing the last stamped passports out of the window of our train".
In final desperation, blank sheets of paper with only the consulate seal and his signature (that could be later written over into a visa) were hurriedly prepared and flung out from the train. As he prepared to depart, he said, "Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best." When he bowed deeply to the people before him, someone exclaimed, "Sugihara. We'll never forget you. I'll surely see you again!"
Sugihara himself wondered about official reaction to the thousands of visas he issued. Many years later, he recalled, "No one ever said anything about it. I remember thinking that they probably didn't realize how many I actually issued."
K. Watanabe argued that there could be 6,000, arguing that use by three family members per visa is reasonable, that there were newspaper articles reporting the 6,000 figure, and that most of the refugees landing on Tsuruga were now admitted with a Sugihara visa. On 29 September 1983, Fuji Television aired a documentary "One visa that decided their fate - the Japanese who saved 4,500 Jews."
In 1985 some Japanese newspapers reported that he saved 6,000 people and others 4,500.Japan Times and Asahi on 19 January 1985, as 6,000, Nikkei and Mainichi on 17 January 1985, as 4,500 The Japan Times, dated 19 January 1985, had the headline "Japanese Man honored for saving 6,000 Jews"; the Los Angeles Times reported, "Sugihara defied orders from Tokyo and issued transit visas to nearly 6,000 Jews". US newspapers referred to Sugihara as "a diplomat who defied his government's orders and issued transit visas for 6,000 Jews".
Table 2 shows the number of refugees who had stayed at Kobe in 1941 based on Archives of MOFA. Refugees classified as "No visa" in the table are presumed to have held fakes of Japanese transit visas issued by Sugihara.Altman, Ilya. " The issuance of visas to war refugees by Chiune Sugihara as reflected in documents of Russian Archives" (2017) The Soviets wanted to purge Polish refugees who had been stranded in Soviet territory with Japanese transit visas as soon as possible,JACAR.B04013209400,i-0882/0036 and so permitted them to get on the train to Vladivostok with or without a destination visa. The Japanese government was forced to admit them. On 8 April 1941, of the 1,400 Polish Jews staying at Kobe, about 1,300 were "for Curaçao" or "No visa".
The Polish ambassador in Tokyo, Tadeusz Romer, remembered, "They (Polish refugees) only had fictitious Dutch visas for the island of Curaçao and Japanese transit visas." According to the refugee name list surveyed by Fukui Prefecture,JACAR.B04013209100,I0881/0448 of the 306 persons who landed at Tsuruga Port in October 1940, there were 203 Poles. Their destinations were US 89, Palestine 46, Curaçao 24, and others. It is estimated that about 80% of them were on the Sugihara visa list. The documents of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumushmm " Polish Jews in Lithuania:Escape to Japan" and "Refugee and Survivor" do not mention the number of people saved by a "Sugihara visa".
More than half of the refugees who entered with invalid visas, including a "Sugihara visa", obtained valid visas with the help of JDC, HIAS, the Embassy of Poland, and the Japanese government, and embarked for host countries. In August–September 1941, Japanese authorities transferred about 850 refugeesJACAR.B04013209700,I-0882/0326 stranded in Japan to Shanghai before Japan and the United States began war. According to Emigration Table by Jewcom, the number of Polish refugees leaving Japan for various destinations was Shanghai 860, US 532, Canada 186, Palestine 186, Australia 81, South Africa 59, and others 207, in total 2,111.
The total number of Jews saved by Sugihara is in dispute, with estimates around 6,000; family visas—which allowed several people to travel on one visa—were also issued, which would account for the much higher figure. Research into the ratio of "accompanying family members" to valid visa holders published in the 2022 book Emerging Heroes by Akira Kitade concludes that "3,000 is the appropriate final number" (p. 132). The Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas for about 6,000 Jews and that around 40,000 descendants of the Jewish refugees are alive today because of his actions. Polish intelligence produced some forged visas. Sugihara's widow and eldest son estimate that he saved 10,000 Jews from certain death, whereas Boston University professor and author Hillel Levine also estimates that he helped "as many as 10,000 people," but that far fewer people ultimately survived.
Some Jews who received Sugihara's visas did not leave Lithuania in time, were captured by the Germans after Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and perished in the Holocaust.The Diplomatic Record Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has opened to the public two documents concerning Sugihara's file: the first aforementioned document is a 5 February 1941 diplomatic note from Chiune Sugihara to Japan's then Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka in which Sugihara stated he issued 1,500 out of 2,139 transit visas to Jews and Poles; however, since most of the 2,139 people were not Jewish, this would imply that most of the visas were given to Polish Jews instead. Levine then notes that another document from the same foreign office file "indicates an additional 3,448 visas were issued in Kaunas for a total of 5,580 visas" which were likely given to Jews desperate to flee Lithuania for safety in Japan or Japanese occupied-China.
Many refugees used their visas to travel across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Jewish community. Romer, the Polish ambassador in Tokyo, organized help for them. From August 1940 to November 1941, he had managed to get transit visas in Japan, asylum visas to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Burma, immigration certificates to British Mandatory Palestine, and immigrant visas to the United States and some Latin American countries for more than two thousand Polish-Lithuanian Jewish refugees, who arrived in Kobe, Japan, and the Shanghai Ghetto, China.
The remaining number of Sugihara survivors stayed in Japan until they were deported to Japanese-occupied Shanghai, where there was already Shanghai Ghetto that had existed as early as the mid-1930s. Some took the route through Korea directly to Shanghai without passing through Japan. A group of thirty people, all possessing a visa of "Jakub Goldberg", were shuttled back and forth on the open sea for several weeks before finally being allowed to pass through Tsuruga. Most of the around 20,000 Jews survived the Holocaust in the Shanghai ghetto until the Japanese surrender in 1945, three to four months following the collapse of the Third Reich itself.
In 1968, Yehoshua Nishri, an economic attaché to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and one of the Sugihara beneficiaries, finally located and contacted him. Nishri had been a Polish teen in the 1940s. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara beneficiaries began to lobby for his recognition by Yad Vashem Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and youngest son Nobuki accepted the honor on his behalf.
In 1985, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked his reasons for issuing visas to the Jews. Sugihara explained that the refugees were human beings, and that they simply needed help.
When asked by Moshe Zupnik, who received one of the visas from Sugihara in 1940, why he risked his career to save other people, he said simply: "I do it just because I have pity on the people. They want to get out so I let them have the visas."
Chiune Sugihara died at a hospital in Kamakura, on 31 July 1986, and was buried in Kamakura Cemetery (Kamakura Reien). Chiune Sugihara's Grave (TripAdvisor, 2018) Despite the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he had remained virtually unknown in his home country. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, attended his funeral, did his neighbours find out what he had done. His subsequent considerable posthumous acclaim contrasts with the obscurity in which he lived following the loss of his diplomatic career.Fogel, Joshua A. "The Recent Boom in Shanghai Studies." Journal of the History of Ideas 71, no. 2 (2010): 313–333.
Troparion, tone 8:
A great light has shone forth to us from the Orient, for thou, o righteous Chiune, suffered as Paul the Apostle for the salvation of Old Israel. Now thy spirit rejoices in the Lord who said: A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another as I have loved you.
In 1984, Yad Vashem bestowed the Righteous Among the Nations title on Chiune Sugihara, the only Japanese national to have been so honored. He was too ill to travel to receive the award at the Israeli embassy in Tokyo, so his wife and one or more of his children accepted the honor on his behalf.
Sugihara Street in Vilnius, Lithuania, Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara Street in Jaffa, Israel, and the asteroid 25893 Sugihara are named after him.
In 1992, the town of Yaotsu opened the Park of Humanity, on a hill overlooking the town. In 2000, the Chiune Sugihara Memorial Hall was opened to the public. Since its establishment, more than 600,000 visitors, Japanese and foreign, visited and studied about Sugihara and his virtue.
A corner for Sugihara Chiune is set up in the Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum near Tsuruga Port, the place where many Jewish refugees arrived in Japan, in the city of Tsuruga, Fukui, Japan.
The Sugihara House Museum is in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Conservative synagogue Temple Emeth, in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, US, built a "Sugihara Memorial Garden" and holds an Annual Sugihara Memorial Concert. In 1996, Albany, New York erected a plaque honoring Sugihara in the city's Raoul Wallenberg Park.
When Sugihara's widow Yukiko travelled to Jerusalem in 1998, she was met by tearful survivors who showed her the yellowing visas that her husband had signed. A park in Jerusalem is named after him. Sugihara appeared on a 1998 Israeli postage stamp. The Japanese government honored him on the centennial of his birth in 2000.
In 2001, a sakura park with 200 trees was planted in Vilnius, Lithuania, to mark the 100th anniversary of Sugihara.
In 2002, a memorial statue of Chiune Sugihara by Ramon G. Velazco titled "Chiune Sugihara Memorial, Hero of the Holocaust" was installed in the Little Tokyo neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, US. The life-size bronze statue depicts Sugihara seated on a bench and holding a hand-written visa. Adjacent to the statue is a granite boulder with dedication plaques and a quotation from the Talmud: "He who saves one life, saves the entire world." Its dedication was attended by consuls from Japan, Israel and Lithuania, Los Angeles city officials and Sugihara's son, Chiaki Sugihara.
In 2007 he was posthumous award awarded the Commander's Cross with the Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta, and the Commander's Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland by the President of Poland in 1996. Also, in 1993, he was awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania. He was posthumous award awarded the Sakura Award by the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC) in Toronto in November 2014.
In June 2016, a street in Netanya, Israel, was named for Sugihara in the presence of his son Nobuki, as a number of Netanya's current residents are descendants of the Lithuanian Jews who had been given a means of escaping the Third Reich. There is also a street named Rua Cônsul Chiune Sugihara in Londrina, Brazil.
The Lithuanian government declared 2020 "The Year of Chiune Sugihara", promising to erect a monument to him and issue postage stamps in his honor. A monument to Sugihara, featuring origami cranes, was unveiled in Kaunas in October 2020.
Since October 2021, there is a Chiune Sugihara Square in Jerusalem as well as a Garden named for him in the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood of the city.
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