Family split by book on Japan's Schindler

By BILLY ADAMS Herald correspondent

When hundreds of desperate men, women and children suddenly appeared at Chiune Sugihara's home, the Japanese diplomat was faced with a stark choice.

It was the summer of 1940 in Kaunas, Lithuania, and the crowd before him - tired, dishevelled, frightened - were mostly Polish Jews fleeing from the Nazis, and almost certain death.

The British, American and French consuls had already turned down their pleas for transit visas to escape via the Soviet Union. Sugihara, under explicit orders to do the same, was their last hope.

He agonised for two days before announcing to the waiting refugees: "I'll issue visas to each and every one of you to the last. So please wait patiently." By defying his masters in Tokyo, Sugihara instigated one of the largest mass escapes of Jews in history.

But today, 16 years after his death, a bitter legal and family battle is raging over the reputation of the man now regarded as "Japan's Schindler".

On Thursday Tokyo District Court began hearing a defamation case in which Sugihara's widow, Yukiko, is suing the Jewish historian who did the most in-depth study of her husband.

She claims the book - In Search of Sugihara - besmirches his reputation, and contains hundreds of distortions and inaccuracies.

Her daughter-in-law Michi says the contents were so terrible that Yukiko was ill in bed for two months after reading it. She is demanding 10 million yen ($165,000) damages and wants to halt sales of the Japanese version.

The book's author, Professor Hillel Levine, is astounded by the action. His is a highly positive account of a man he puts in the same class as figures such as Gandhi. Sugihara was a person so compassionate that he was able to make goodness itself contagious and bring out the best even in bad people, says Levine.

He has also received the support of one of Sugihara's three sons, Nobiko, who has pledged to testify in his defence.

"I hope that this lawsuit will be dropped," says Nobiko in a letter to his mother and her supporters, "[and] that the attacks on Hillel Levine and his publisher will be forgotten."

Sugihara's actions mirror those of the industrialist Oskar Schindler, who rescued more than 1200 Jews from the death camps. But the number saved by Sugihara appears far greater.

As Japanese vice-consul, he spent August of 1940 hand-writing visas round the clock. When he was finally forced by occupying Soviet authorities to close the consulate, he left a note on the door with the address of his hotel.

As his train pulled away from the station three days later, Sugihara threw unsigned visas out of the window.

Of the 2139 holders of his visas, the vast majority are believed to have made it along the trans-Siberian railway to Japan. As they represented only household heads, it's estimated up to 10,000 lives were saved.

Some refugees escaped on to America, while others were moved to Shanghai before the attack on Pearl Harbour.

Although Sugihara's achievement was astonishing, he died unrecognised in his own country.

Yukiko, now 88, maintains her husband was forced to resign when he returned to Tokyo in 1947 because of his life-saving actions in Lithuania. Working in a series of nondescript jobs, he lived out the rest of his days in shame.

Levine, a professor of sociology and religion at Boston University, draws a different conclusion.

He first heard Sugihara's story in 1992, and for more than four years devoted his efforts to finding out why he took such a great personal risk, knowing that he would be likely to be killed if the Nazis found out he had given visas to Jews.

He pored over official archives in Japan, Germany, Britain, the US, Russia and Australia, and interviewed hundreds of people, including Yukiko and other Sugihara family members.

His book paints a complex picture of a hero who was also ordinary and vulnerable. Levine relates how Sugihara once visited a brothel. He also reveals the existence of his first wife, a Russian he tracked down to an Australian nursing home, who married and divorced Sugihara in his youth.

Rather than a career diplomat, Levine also contends that Sugihara, fluent in several languages, was a spy with important espionage duties who got distracted by the welfare of the desperate Jews.

If his superiors were dismayed by his actions, he believes Sugihara would have been executed. He was instead promoted before being asked to leave the service on his return to Tokyo in 1947 - along with 90 per cent of diplomats in Japan.

Levine's belief that Sugihara was a spy is sorely disputed by the family. Observers believe that many other disputed points are more likely cultural misunderstandings than factual misrepresentations.

In the book, Levine describes Sugihara's enormous capacity to "drink but not get drunk", an ability he says was used with great aplomb to charm and befriend "hardened Soviet commissars". It was this relationship, says Levine, which was essential to ensure the safe passage of the Jews through the Soviet Union to Japan.

"I am accused of slandering him as an alcoholic," says Levine. "I did no such thing. I represented his drinking in a very positive way." During his research, Levine travelled to Japan several times, and interviewed members of the Sugihara family.

He interviewed Yukiko at her home and met her again when she was honoured in New York.

Yukiko's youngest son, Nobiko, says he has known the author for at least a decade, and continues to regard him as an honest and hard-working historian.

"I know that the allegations against him are false and that if he were not threatened by lawsuits, he would be able to explain any of the questions that have come up about the facts and interpretations in his book," he states in the letter to Yukiko and her supporters.

"I also know that my mother, who is very old, has been suffering from lapses in memory and that under these circumstances, people have seriously exploited her to make statements that she would not have made had she been more lucid."

The court case, which was adjourned until January immediately after opening to allow both sides to present written statements, marks the latest chapter in a story that went largely unnoticed before Sugihara's death.

A year before he died, Israel named him "one of the righteous among nations", an honour bestowed on individuals, including Oskar Schindler, who helped Jews escape the Holocaust.

It wasn't until 2000 that he was officially honoured by the Japanese Government, only after sustained pressure from his family and Jewish groups. This helped in their eyes to regain Sugihara's lost reputation.

It is that reputation which Yukiko and her supporters say they are now fighting to protect.

Levine's work, first published in English in 1996 and translated into Japanese in 1998, has played a big part in elevating Sugihara's achievement to the international stage. He was interested in "the mystery of goodness."

Now Levine can't believe he is in the dock, and questions why his detractors took so long to launch the action.

"I'm still at a loss as to how I find myself in this incredible situation," he says.

"As a historian my responsibility was to present an accurate interpretation of Sugihara. I invested years of my life in finding this great and inspiring man.

"If this were happening in the United States it would be laughed out of court.

"I'm very upset about it."