Statue honoring 'Japan's Schindler' unveiled in LA's Little Tokyo

Friday December 13, 2002

LOS ANGELES (AP) Chiune Sugihara was Japan's deputy consul general in Lithuania when thousands of World War II Jewish refugees began flooding into his office, requesting exit visas

Ignoring Japanese orders to stop granting them, he was credited with saving more than 6,000 people from Nazi persecution and death.

On Friday, Japanese and Israeli officials offered their thanks as they unveiled a statue of Sugihara in the city's Little Tokyo district near downtown. It shows the diplomat sitting on a bench in a business suit, holding out a visa with his right hand.

``To be able to come together to celebrate the commitments and achievement of a great humanitarian, Ambassador Sugihara, is a very, very special and uplifting event for all of us,'' said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

An estimated 40,000 descendants of people Sugihara saved are alive today, according to Wiesenthal Center records.

Sugihara's son, Chiaki, flew in from Tokyo to attend the dedication. He said his father, who died in 1986 at age 86, never talked about what he did during the war.

``He was a very quiet man, very generous,'' said Chiaki Sugihara.

Forced to resign for ignoring his government's orders, Sugihara eventually found work at a postal exchange and later a trading company and export business, his son said.

He is now known as the Japanese Schindler, a reference to German businessman Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving 1,200 Jews from Nazi death camps by persuading Nazi officials he needed them to work in his factory in wartime Poland.

(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)