22. Even Before WWII, Chiune Sugihara Was Willing to Risk His Career to Save Others
Sugihara eventually graduated from Japan’s elite training center on the USSR, the Harbin Gakuin, and became one of the Foreign Ministry’s go-to experts on the Soviet Union. When Japan seized Manchuria from China in the 1930s and established a puppet state under Japanese supervision, he became his country’s director of foreign affairs there. In that capacity, he negotiated the purchase of the North Manchurian Railroad from the USSR in 1932.
In 1935, in a display of conscientiousness that augured his willingness to risk it all to save others, Sugihara resigned his position to protest Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese. He was too valuable a civil servant to let go to waste, however, so he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department, and as a translator for the diplomatic legation in Finland. In November 1939, shortly after WWII began, Sugihara was assigned as vice-consul to the Japanese consulate in Kovno, capital of Lithuania.
