http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070528a3.html
Monday, May 28, 2007
A brief stop to honor Sugihara
Imperial Couple's five-minute visit raises eyebrows
VILNIUS (Kyodo) Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited on Saturday a
monument in Lithuania to pay homage to the late Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese
diplomat who helped save about 6,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust by issuing
them transit visas.
Emperor Akihito visits the monument in Vilnius to Chiune Sugihara, a
Japanese diplomat who rescued Jews in Lithuania during World War II, on
Saturday. AP PHOTO
But their visit was brief, taking up only about five minutes out of their
24-hour stay in the Baltic state on the fourth leg of their 10-day European
tour.
It is not clear why the visit to a monument honoring so widely respected a man
as Sugihara was kept so short, but observers say it probably reflects the
Foreign Ministry's complex attitude toward Sugihara's actions.
Sugihara issued visas against his government's orders and was forced to resign
from the ministry after the war. The ministry waited more than half a century
to restore his honor by establishing a plaque for him.
He died in 1986 at age 86.
In 1940, a year after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, scores of Jews flooded the
Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, the former Lithuanian capital, seeking transit
visas to Japan to go to the United States and elsewhere.
Then Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka instructed the consulate not to issue
visas to those who did not meet financial and other requirements, an order
apparently issued out of consideration for Germany, with which Japan was
negotiating the Tripartite Pact.
Sugihara defied the orders and continued to issue thousands of visas to fleeing
Jews on humanitarian grounds until the consulate was closed.
He was forced to quit the ministry in 1947, after the war had ended, giving
rise to a charge that he was dismissed for defying Tokyo's orders during the
war.
For years, Sugihara remained virtually unknown to the world, but his actions
came to light in 1985 when Israel awarded him the honor of "the Righteous Among
the Nations."
He is now referred to as a "Japanese Schindler," after Oskar Schindler, a
German industrialist who worked to save Jews during World War II and on whose
life the 1993 movie "Schindler's List" was based.
The Japanese government had long maintained that Sugihara was not dismissed for
defying orders, and his honor was not restored until 2000, when the ministry
set up a plaque honoring his actions at its Diplomatic Record Office in Tokyo.
Sugihara "exhibited the significance of humanitarian consideration by his
courageous judgment," then Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said at the plaque's
unveiling ceremony.
Katsumasa Watanabe, who heads a group studying Sugihara's acts, speculates that
Saturday's Imperial visit to the monument is the result of a compromise by the
government. The government "couldn't ignore (Sugihara's memory) during the
Lithuanian visit by the Emperor and Empress, so its best judgment may have been
the five-minute stop," he said.
Chihiro Sugihara, a grandchild of Sugihara who lives in Thailand, said before
the Imperial visit, "I hope the visit serves as an opportunity not to bring up
the past but to hand down the story of a man's acts from generation to
generation."
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