On January 21,2018, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Lithuania to pay tribute to Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who disobeyed his own government’s orders and issued visas to 6,000 Jews that allowed them to escape the Nazi death camps during WWII.

The Japnese government’s refusal to allow Sugihara to help the Jewish refugees was premised on the fact that Japan was an ally of Nazi Germany and  Mussolini’s Fascist Italy: the axis countries that were brutalizing and terrorizing neighboring countries in Asia and Europe.  

Sugihara was a peace activist and a humanitarian.  What he did for the Polish Jewish refugees deserves the admiration and honor bestowed upon him by the world peace communities. But little is known about his mistreatment by the Japanese government during the time he was issuing visas to the Jews, and after he was recalled to Japan at the end of the war.

The Japanese government closed the consulate office located in Kovno, where Sugihara was disobeying the orders of Japan by issuing thousands of visas to desperate Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi-occupied Poland. Sugihara was issuing visas from the open window of the train as he was leaving the city.  

Those fortunate refugees who received the visas were able to leave Poland by train to Moscow, then to Kobe, Japan–with the final destination to Shanghai, since China offered safe harbor to the fleeing refugees until the war ended and the refugees were resettled in other parts of the world.  

And what did the Japanese government do for Sugihara, who risked his life to save the Jewish refugees, after his return to Japan at the end of the war? The government forced him to resign from his diplomatic position, notwithstanding the fact he and his family had spent 18 months in a prison camp in Romania when it was under the Soviets because of his diplomatic status.

According to his wife Yukiko Sugihara and others in Japan, Sugihara’s forced resignation was directly related to the unauthorized visas he issued to the Jewish refugees.

It is ironic indeed that Prime Minister Abe went to Lithuania on January 20, 2018, to pay respect to a former diplomat who had been punished by the Japanese government during WWII for the same act he is now being honored.  While it is certainly commendable to remember Sugihara’s act of compassion for the Jewish refugees, Prime Minister Abe’s gesture of remembrance is empty and meaningless without a sincere apology to the memory and family of Chiune Sugihara, who defied his own government in order to save the lives of the Jewish refugees.  Not only did Prime Minister Abe fail to offer that apology, he exploited Sugihara’s self sacrifice and humanitarian work by continuing to distract the world from the Japanese government’s 70-year denial and cover up of the atrocities and war crimes Imperial Japan committed against 35 million Asian victims. Mr. Abe shamelessly appeared to take credit for Sugihara’s bravery to save the lives of the Jews when no credit was due. The prime minister owed an apology to Chiune Sugihara and his family for their mistreatment by the Japanese government–and to the millions of Jews for Japan’s complicity with the Nazi government which caused 6 million Jews to die during WWII.

We urge Prime Minister Abe and the government of Japan to listen to the humane voices of the many intelligent, progressive Japanese people who oppose racism, militarism, historical amnesia, dangerous nuclear power, and the abuse of labor and human rights. This is the voice of the Japanese masses that the world needs to hear.