A Story of a Japanese Judaist
Some Japanese really helped lives of thousands of Judaists in WWII.
Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986) was a Japanese diplomat who served as Vice-Consul for the Empire of Japan in Lithuania. During World War II, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Poland and residents of Lithuania. Sugihara wrote travel visas that facilitated the escape of more than 6,000 Jewish refugees to Japanese territory, risking his career and his family's lives. Sugihara had told the refugees to call him "Sempo", the Sino-Japanese reading of the characters in his first name, discovering it was much easier for Western people to pronounce.[1] In 1985, Israel honored him as Righteous Among the Nations for his actions.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara
However when 6,000 Judaists arrived at Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan through Siberia, the situation changed in Tokyo. Then Imperial Government did not like to welcome these Judaists due to their alliance with Germany. So, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Empire of Japan sent an official notice to the deputy counsel general stationed in the port city of the USSR, requesting virtual prohibition of allowing the Judaists to sail to Japan. Nonetheless, the deputy counsel general Saburo Nei, in compassion to poor Judaists, neglected this telegraphic instruction. Nei authorized voyage to Japan for the Jewish asylum seekers.
The Judaiasts landed on Tsuruga, a port city of Japan on the Sea of Japan on October 1941. Residents of Tsuruga helped them get foods and other necessities. Then the band of refugees mainly from Poland moved ｂｙ train to Kobe, another port city on the Pacific side where a humble community of Judaiats living in Japan existed. But, they were allowed to stay in Japan only for 10 days. It was impossible for them to find ships to the US or Shanghai in only such a short period of time.
So, a Japanese scholar of Judaism who could speak the Hebrew word, named Setsuzo Kotsuji, came to be involved as some of the Judaists once heard Kotsuji's lecture delivered in Manchuria and asked help from Kotsuji. Kotsuji went to Tokyo to meet his old acquaintance Yosuke Matsuoka, the notorious Foreign Minister of the Empire who was regarded as a kind of friend of Nazi Germany. A little surprisingly, Matsuoka gave a tip to Kotsuji, telling that it was the police but not the Foreign Ministry that could allow prolonged stay for the Judaists since they were now within Japan. So, Kotsuji went back to Kobe to persuade top officials of the police department of Kobe City. Kotusji could finally gain the goodwill from the police after several lucrative banquets with high raking police officers. The Judaists could now have time enough to find ships that would carry them to the US or Shanghai.
Accordingly, before the Pearl Harbor Attack by the Imperial Navy in December 1941, most of the Judaists could sail to the US or Shanghai. They could completely avoid the Holocaust.
In June 1945, Setsuzo Kotsuji and his family moved or fled from Japan to Manchuria, since he was suspected of having a dangerous ideology against the Empire by the police. When the Empire of Japan surrendered to the US in August 1945, Soviet Union troops invaded Manchuria. Kotsuji was about to be arrested by Russians like other Japanese soldiers and citizens then living in Manchuria, a virtual puppet country of the Japanese Empire. But some Judaists living in Manchuria protected Kotsuji from the Russian authority. Kotsuji and his family could return to Japan safely.
In 1959, Setsuzo Kotsuji visited Israel. He converted to Judaism there after strict religious probation. He changed his name to Abraham Kotsuji. He was warmly welcomed by the survivors he had helped in Japan in 1941.
In 1974 Kotsuji died at the age of 73 in Japan. Though Israel was at war at the time, his dead body was carried to Israel for burial as he wished so. A minister of the Israeli Government took the trouble to arrange this extraordinary burial, as the minister was one of those Judaists whose lives had been saved by Kotuji in Japan in 1941.
So, this is a real story of a very rare Japanese Judaist.
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http://e-satoken.blogspot.jp/2013/04/nhk2013.html
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Mat 5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Mat 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.