Chiune Sugihara: The Japanese Schindler Troy Kawahara Individual Website Senior Division
Process Paper How I selected my topic For National History Day 2008-2009, I chose to do a Japanese diplomat named Chiune Sugihara, who served as consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania, during World War II. He wrote over 2,000 visas to help Jewish refugees escape Hitler. I had heard about Sugihara from a brief story in my elementary school language arts book and when I learned that the theme was The Individual in History: Actions and Legacies I figured this would be a good opportunity to learn more. How I researched my topic When starting the research for my project, I first went online to see what I could find. One of the first sources I found was a PBS documentary about Sugihara. This documentary was engaging, and helped me understand the sacrifices Sugihara made to save others and the legacy that he left in the process. I then searched for books, articles, museum exhibits, and internet sites regarding the topic in order to get a deeper understanding of the actions taken by Sugihara. I researched World War II and the Holocaust, in particular, to gain a deeper understanding of factors that may have influenced the decisions Sugihara made. Since historians only recently gained interest in the story of Sugihara, and his decision to write life saving visas, there are not as many resources available on him as there are for other Holocaust heroes, such as Oskar Schindler. I was fortunate to find a local resident who was a recipient of a Sugihara visa. I contacted him for a personal interview and later attended his lecture as a survivor of the Holocaust. How I Selected My Presentation Category I have always been interested in computers and have created websites in the past. This year I decided to learn Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and did all my own coding for the project. This was challenging but I learned a lot about coding and I am now comfortable with the web design process. I thought I could best tell the story of Sugihara using a project category that would allow me to combine graphics, media clips, and text. How My Topic Relates to This Year's Theme My topic relates to this year s theme because it presents an individual who took action to benefit those whose lives were endangered. Sugihara disobeyed his government and wrote transit visas because he knew that it was the right thing to do. A typical Japanese individual would unquestionably follow authority making Sugihara s actions just that much more important. He put his honor on the line and his life and family at risk to help the Jewish refugees. Sugihara assumed responsibility and took action when many others failed to do so. In writing the visas, Mr. Sugihara embodied the best in mankind and gave to others the legacy of life.
Annotated Bibliography Primary Resources Books Sugihara, Yukiko. Visas for Life. Trans. Hiroki Sugihara. San Francisco: Edu-Comm Plus, 1995. This was a book written by Yukiko Sugihara, Chiune s second wife. It chronicles both of their lives, and has many personal stories about the Sugihara family. This book was especially helpful because it was written by his wife, and gave me some insight into what Chiune was like as a man. Mrs. Sugihara wrote about her own personal experiences, not only with Chiune, but just as the wife of a diplomat. Her personal memoirs solidify information found in other sources and also added first hand perspective to my research. While Mr. Sugihara made the final decision to write the visas, the family as a unit agreed it was the right thing to so. The books described those moments in detail and helped me understand the concern that Mr. Sugihara has for the safety and welfare of both his family and the refugees. The book contained many quotes from Mr. Sugihara s diary and discussions he had with his family. Those quotes were useful in helping me tell the Sugihara story on my website. This book was my best resource. Melamed, Leo and Tamarkin, Bob. Escape to the Futures. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996. This book is an autobiography of a man who was saved by Sugihara. This man s name was Leo Melamed. Mr. Melamed received a Sugihara visa, and details the journey to get a visa, the journey to Japan, and his experience as a result of the visa. It also talks about his professional life (which wouldn t have happened without Sugihara). Ganor, Solly. Light One Candle. New York: Kodansha America, Inc., 2003. This book was written by a survivor of the Holocaust, who knew Sugihara personally. Solly was a young boy living in Kaunas, Lithuania where he met Mr. Sugihara. Solly tells the story of how Mr. Sugihara gave him money to go see a movie and in return Solly invited the Sugihara family to his house to share in the Chanukah celebration. The book is a biography, full of memoirs and stories, and overall reflects the situation as it was from his point of view. I believe that it was very helpful, because not only did it give me an appreciation for Chiune Sugihara as a person, but it also provides perspective from someone who was put into one of the Nazi death camps. The Chanukah story is retold in many of the references I used in putting together my website. However, there is an internet site (www.isurvived.org) that discredits the story. In an attempt to assure myself of the authenticity of this story I further searched for information on Solly Ganor, Eric Saul, who assisted Solly Ganor in the writing of the book, and K.K. Brattman, who is managing editor of the (www.isurvived.org) website. While I could find many reference on the web than spoke to the credibility of Eric Saul and Solly Ganor I could find nothing that really told me who K.K,. Brattman is. Therefore, the reliability of the discredit is questionable.
Lectures and Interviews Stoessinger, John D. Lecture. 2 March 2009. During the telephone interview I conducted with Dr. Stoessinger in January he invited me to attend his class the evening he would lecture and tell the story of how he and his family survived the Holocaust. Dr. Stoessinger explained in great deal his experience and shared what it was like to stand in front of Mr. Sugihara and ask for the visas his family needed to escape Europe. He helped place the actions of Chiune Sugihara in context and gave me a much better understanding of how desperate the refugees were. Stoessinger, John D. Telephone Interview. 30 January 2009. This was one of my best resources, and was an actual interview with a Sugihara survivor. Dr. Stoessinger was a seven year old boy when his home country of Austria was invaded by the Nazis. He and his family moved quickly into Prague, Czechoslovakia. There they were still under persecution because they were Jewish, but luckily they met Mr. Chiune Sugihara. Dr. Stoessinger shared his story and invited me to a lecture he will be giving on the Holocaust in early March. I plan to attend. It was great to actually speak to a survivor. He gave me a lot of information that I did not know and I found him very helpful in furthering my understanding of how desperate the Jewish people were. It was very humbling to talk to him and I am very grateful that he was willing to share his experience with me. Documentaries Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness. Dir. Robert Kirk. WGBH, 2005. Although this documentary was made very recently, it contained interviews and pictures which came from the time period. This was a very well made documentary which chronicles Sugihara s life and issues surrounding the visas. Many of the interviews are especially important because some of the people who were interviewed have died in the past couple of years, which makes the testimony of the living that much more valuable. It also had interesting information about the war, and many other primary resources which helped my research. Museums Museum of Tolerance. 2008. 30 December 2008. I visited the museum over my Christmas break. The museum was a very interesting place and provided me with my thesis of responsibility for the project. The museum was very informational and had a strong impact on me. It had a strong message of responsibility. This helped me shape my thesis because Mr. Sugihara took responsibility not only for his actions, but also for the lives that he had saved. I was also fortune enough to see a survivor of the Holocaust, named Bella Friedman, who shared her experiences from the Holocaust, which only made this resource even more helpful. The Museum of Tolerance
also was very informative, and gave me a good background on the Holocaust, the events and the people involved in it. Websites United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 11 February 2009. http://www.ushmm.org. This is the site of the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum located in Washington D.C. This site has extensive information about both Chiune Sugihara and the Holocaust in general. The site provided me with a better understanding of Mr. Sugihara and his actions. The site had many pictures and short videos of interviews with survivors of the Holocaust including individuals who received visas from Sugihara. I wrote to the librarian at the Museum and they granted me permission to use pictures and videos from this site on my website entry. USC SHOAH FOUNDATION I University of Southern California 30 January 2009. http://college.usc.edu/vhi/otv/otv.php. This web site has information about the Shoah Foundation, and I was interested in the interviews of survivors that were on the website. I found that their testimonies were informative even though the testimonials were not full length. Secondary Resources Books Fogelman, Eva. Conscience & Courage. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. This book had information about Chiune Sugihara and other individuals who rescued the Jewish people from the Holocaust. I was mainly interested in the part about Sugihara, but I found that many of the other resources were informative as well. Akabori, Anne. The Gift of Life. USA: Edu-Comm Plus, 2005. This book was written fairly recently, and I have actually spoken to the author. Ms. Anne Akabori serves as part of the board in the Visas for Life Foundation. She is very knowledgeable regarding the life and legacy of Chiune Sugihara, having been close friends with many members of the family. This is but one of the books about Sugihara that she has either, written, or helped to write, and it was interesting and helped fill in some of the gaps. Levine, Hillel. In Search of Sugihara. New York: The Free Press, 1996. This book was very interesting, and provided a further look into the motives of Sugihara. The main quest of the book is to find what makes for a mass savior, and Sugihara was a way for this author to explore that. I saw different perspectives and learned new information, which I had not found elsewhere.
Messenger, Charles. The Second World War in the West. London: Cassell & Co, 1999. This book helped me with the background of the Second World War (in the West). Not only did it have a timeline, numerous graphics, and photos, but also provide details about the war. This was helpful because it helped me find exact dates, names, and events that were especially important in the Sugihara story. Willmott, H.P. The Second World War in the Far East. London: Cassell & Co, 1999. This book was the counterpart of the other book about the west. This book helped me understand the issues if the war in the East. It also provided information about political and social climates during this time period, that were essential to learning and understanding Chiune Sugihara s actions and legacies. Spielvogel, Jackson. World History Modern Times. New York: Glencoe, 2006. This book gave me information about dates, events, and people. This was useful for finding information about Japan s isolationism and World War II. Gilbert, Martin. The Holocaust: A His tory of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1985. This book was a very comprehensive collection of the relationship of the world and the Jewish people during World War II. It did contain information about Chiune Sugihara, but I used the book to look at Hitler, and the Jewish people who suffered under his wrath. Some quotes and facts are from this book. Volume Library. Nashville: Southwestern Inc., 2003. These books were not only a reference source, but also a source from which I obtained permission to include maps in my project. I obtained permission to use any of the maps included in a software program, that was included as part of the encyclopedia set. Swartz, Mary and Tokayer, Marvin. The Fugu Plan. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2004. This book was interesting, and details a botched plan to move Jewish people into Manchuria to help Japan as an industrial nation. The book has much reference to Mr. Sugihara, because he sent so many Jews through Japan, and mainly explains their relations during the war. It also contains other background information regarding the Holocaust and World War II. Halter Marek. Stories of Deliverance. Trans. Michel Bernard. Peru, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1998. This was another book that had many different stories about people who rescued Jewish people during the Holocaust. Again there were many stories, but the section that I was most interested in was about Chiune Sugihara.
Video and Film YouTube Broadcast Yourself. 26 February 2009. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=anne+akabori&aq=f On YouTube I found a video of an interview done with Anne Akabori, Chair of the Visas for Life Foundation by a program called "Taped with Rabbi Doug." In this interview she talked about her book entitled "The Gift." She talked about Mr. Sugihara and helped the audience understand what it was like to grow up in a Samurai tradition. She also addressed the significance of Mr. Sugihara's actions. Schindler s List. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Universal Pictures, 1993. This movie provided me with background on the Holocaust and helped me visualize this time period, and the atrocities that the Jewish people of the Holocaust endured. It gave me information about another individual, Oskar Schindler, who also saved the Jewish people from the death camps. Mr. Schindler removed individuals from the death camps and placed them as workers in a factory that made mess kits for the military. He would eventually convince the Nazi party to allow him to move the workers to a factory far away from the death camps and this ultimately saved them from death. Although Mr. Schindler s actions were no less noble than Mr. Sugihara s, it helped me better understand the significance of Mr. Sugihara s actions. Unlike Schindler he did not have to see what was happening to the Jewish people in the death camps, or use them for self gain, before he gave them the visas. He just gave them the visas because it was the right thing to do. Newspaper and Magazines Williams, Kevin. Visas for Life saved thousands. Chicago Sun Times 2 Mar 1997: 1. This article looks at the visas and why they were written. Interestingly enough, this source includes ideas about Oskar Schindler being the German Sugihara, which I had thought about before I had found this article. This gave me some backing around this idea when I found the article. Websites Chiune Sugihara: Visas for Life Foundation, solely authorized by the family of Chiune Sugihara. 3 January 2009. http://www.visasforlife.org This site was very helpful. It provided information about Sugihara and helped me get into contact with the head of this organization, Anne Akabori, who was very helpful, and had met the Sugihara family. Anne Akabori also gave me permission to use picture from the Visas for Life materials on my website. Visas for Life. 1997. 29 December 2008. http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=hkltj8mukvh&b=475919 This website was helpful and contained many pictures and stories about the survivors. It also has many photos which I found to be helpful. The site was based on an exhibit which
was shown at the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance during the 1990 s. Overall the electronic exhibit was very helpful. Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness PBS. 2005. 20 December 2008. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/sugihara/. This site is connected to the documentary with the same name. Although much of the information was the same there were some differences, which helped add depth to my project. The interactive timeline was especially interesting, and gave a good amount of information. CHIUNE SUGIHARA BRIEF HISTORY. 30 January 2009. http://www.chiunesugihara100.com/eng/history.htm. This page was formed because of a centennial celebration, and contains a simple timeline of his life. It is helpful however, and gave me some verification of dates, and also gave me information regarding the jobs and positions he held.