A former official of the semigovernmental Japan National Tourism Organization has published an English-language version of his research on Jews who escaped via Japan from wartime persecution by the Nazis.
Akira Kitade, 70, initially published the book in Japanese two years ago, based on a study of the behind-the-scenes role Japan played in supporting the efforts of Chiune Sugihara, who, as an acting consul in the then-Lithuanian capital of Kaunas in 1940, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by issuing transit visas.
Sugihara, often referred to as Japan's Oskar Schindler, died at the age of 86 in 1986. Schindler, the German factory owner in Poland, provided Jews with a safe haven during World War II and was depicted in the Steven Spielberg film "Schindler's List."