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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Wednesday, April 2, 2003

Japan diplomat honored for saving wartime Jews

Advertiser Staff

A pictorial exhibit on the life of a Japanese diplomat whose intervention saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust opens today at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii.

The exhibit will be launched at 5:30 p.m. with a screening of "Inochi no Visa (Visas for Life)," a documentary about the late Chiune Sugihara. Dispatched to Lithuania in 1939 to open a Japanese consulate, Sugihara ignored his government's orders and wrote visas for about 6,000 Jewish refugees from occupied Poland, enabling them to escape through the Soviet Union to Japan.

After the war, the Sugihara family was imprisoned in an internment camp in Romania. When he went home in 1947, Sugihara was asked to resign from the diplomatic service because of his actions.

Sugihara died in 1986, a year after he received honors from Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.

His widow, Yukiko, and youngest son, Chiaki, will meet with the public at 7 p.m. Thursday at Honpa Hongwanji, 1727 Pali Highway. His widow also will speak about her husband's work, at 10 a.m. Friday at the cultural center, with a book signing for her published memoirs, "Visas for Life," to follow.

The public also is invited to shabat service at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Temple Emanu-El.

Information: 945-7633.