Sugihara Yukiko: The Wife Who Stood By Sugihara’s Side

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Sugihara Yukiko
Date 2 May 2000
Source https://web.archive.org/web/20000815205437/http://boxer.senate.gov:80/photo/index.html
Author Office of Senator Barbara Boxer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yukiko_Sugihara_May_2,_2000.jpg

Fig. The Sugihara’s. Yukiko left.

This is a schematic picture. The interested reader can visit the following site for real image at the United States Holocaust Museum:

https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1071770

Sugihara Yukiko was the wife of Sugihara Chiune (1900-1986) , a Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jewish refugees during World War II by issuing them transit visas. 

In this blog post, I will share some of her memories and poems that reveal her courage and compassion in the face of adversity.

Born in 1913, Yukiko Kikuchi (later Sugihara) married Sugihara Chiune and went through the Lithuania turmoil with her husband. Her description [1], [2] of the Sugihara scheme seems consistent is believed to be accurate.

She recalls [1], (translation by the author)

“On September 29, my husband did not come back home for lunch busy issuing visas. He usually had full course lunch prepared. He kept issuing visas even after the office closing time. Several days later his right hand started aching such that I had to give massage. He was completely exhausted and he fell asleep while I was massaging. He started to have red eyes and his face began changing. He seemed to have lost weight. On average, he issued 300 handwritten visas a day. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan ordered Sugihara to clear the consulate and go to Berlin.　On September 5, at the train station of Kaunas, he was still writing visas until the train began to move.”

Yukiko published her Tanka [3], the Japanese poem, which is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. [4] Tanka which goes back to the 8th century consist of five units usually with the following pattern of on:

5-7-5-7-7.

The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no-ku ("upper phrase"), and the 7-7 is called the shimo-no-ku ("lower phrase") [5].　One of her Tanka which vividly captures Sugihara’s anxiety is:

(translation by the author)

[1] Youtube site: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Chiune+Sugihara+Doc.+1

(translation by the author)

[2] Sugihara, Y., “Visas for 6000”, Taisho Shuppan, Tokyo, 1994

[3] Watanabe, K. and Sugihara, Y., “Ketsudan”, Taisho Shuppan, Tokyo, 1996

[4] Sugihara, Y., “Byakuya”, Taisho Shuppan, Tokyo, 1995

[5] Wikipedia site: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanka




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