New evidence has emerged of another high-ranking Japanese official to be involved in the rescue of Jews during World War II via issuing transit visas those escaping persecution from Nazi Germany to pass through Japan, according to a report from the English-language Japanese daily The Mainichi released in late May.
Saburo Nei (1902-92), who was Japan's acting consul-general in Vladivostok, in the then-USSR, is believed to have granted visas during the war after Akira Kitade, 76, a freelance writer living in Tokyo who has written books on Jewish refugees, discovered that Polish Jew Simon Korentajer had been to Japan on travel documents issued by Nei while on a US trip for stories on Holocaust survivors.
After contacting Korentajer's grandchild Kim Hydorn, 53, a resident of the US, she sent him pictures of the visa. Following inspection, it was found that the visa was issued on Feb. 28, 1941, and permits travel to the United States via transfer through the ports of Tsuruga in Fukui Prefecture on the Sea of Japan and Yokohama, along the Pacific coast. Nei's signature and the consulate in Vladivostok's official seal can also be seen on the document.
Kitade also recounted the story of Korentajer, who was born in Warsaw, and later fled to Lithuania with his family during Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939. By February 1941, the US Embassy in Moscow rejected Korentajer's application for visas to enter the country, where he later traveled via the Trans-Siberian Railway in the Soviet Union to reach Vladivostok in Russia's far east.
Despite Japan's then-policy of not grant transit visas to people without permission to reach their final destination, the report noted that Nei may have made the independent decision to issue visas. In March 1941, Korentajer and his family arrived in Japan, later travelling to Shanghai, China, and finally the US after the war, in August 1947.
Yakov Zinberg, a professor at Kokushikan University, corroborated the evidence while doing research in Russia, another location with records on Nei, where he also found in the state archives of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs that Nei told a Soviet official that "he issued a set number of transit visas without permission from Tokyo."
It is alleged that he may have felt sorry for the Jewish refugees. Professor Zinberg also noted that "the visa that's been found now is an important document in support of the written records found on the Soviet side."
Nei reportedly never spoke of having issued visas during the war.
Nei was born in the village of Hirose, now part of the city of Miyazaki, in 1902. Following the completion of his training with Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1921, Nei was stationed in the Soviet Union and Iran, and from December 1940 until he resigned from the Ministry after the war.
He later served as the head of the regional immigration bureaus in Kagoshima and Nagoya.
Another Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara (1900-86), was instrumental in helping Lithuanian Jews attain visas during the war, aiding approximately 6000 people to enter Japan. Known as the original 'Japanese Schindler,' Sugihara was recognized for his efforts as one of the Righteous Among the Nations by Israel in 1985.