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Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara, born on January 1, 1900, was the first Japanese diplomat posted to Lithuania. He was born to a middle-class family from Yaotsu, in Japan's Gifu Prefecture on the main Japanese Island of Honshu, north of Nagoya. Sugihara is sometimes also referred to as "Chiune," an earlier rendition of the Japanese character for "Sempo," part of his formal name. Chiune Sugihara was born January 1, 1900, in Yaotsu, a rural area in Gifu Prefecture of the Chūbu region in Japan to a middle-class father, Yoshimizu Sugihara, and Yatsu Sugihara, a samurai-class mother. He was the second son among five boys and one girl. In 1912, he graduated with top honors from Furuwatari School, and entered Nagoya Daigo Chugaku (now Zuiryo high school), a combined junior and senior high school. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a physician, but he deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only his name on the exam papers. Instead, he entered Waseda University in 1918 and majored in English literature. In 1919, he passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam. The Japanese Foreign Ministry recruited him and assigned him to Harbin, China, where he also studied the Russian and German languages and later became an expert in Russian affairs.

Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture. He began to work for an export company as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Utilizing his command of the Russian language, Sugihara went on to work and live a low-key existence in the Soviet Union for sixteen years, while his family stayed in Japan. In 1968, Jehoshua Nishri, an economic attache to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and one of the Sugihara beneficiaries, finally located and contacted him. Nishri had been a Polish teen in 1940. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara beneficiaries began to lobby for inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial. In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations (Hebrew: חסידי אומות העולם ‎, translit. Khasidei Umot ha-Olam) by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and son accepted the honor on his behalf. Sugihara and his descendants were given perpetual Israeli citizenship.

In that year, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked his reasons for issuing visas to the Jews. Sugihara gave two reasons: one, that these refugees were human beings, and the other, that they simply needed help. As Sugihara stated in a conversation with a visitor to his home near Tokyo Bay that year:“	You want to know about my motivation, don't you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He cannot just help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people's lives....The spirit of humanity, philanthropy...neighborly friendship...with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation---and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.[7]	”

When asked why he risked his career to save other people, he quoted an old samurai saying, "Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge."

Sugihara died the following year, on July 31, 1986. In spite of the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he remained virtually unknown in his home country. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, showed up at his funeral did his neighbors find out what he had done.