In the summer of 1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania. One morning he looked out his window and saw hundreds of Jewish refugees crowded at the consulate gate, desperate for transit visas that would let them escape through Japan. He cabled Tokyo for permission to issue them. Tokyo said no. He cabled again. No. A third time. No.
He issued the visas anyway. For twenty-nine days, Sugihara sat at his desk and wrote visas by hand, producing in a single day what normally took a month of bureaucratic processing. His wife mixed ink. He skipped meals. When the consulate was finally closed and he was ordered to leave, he kept writing visas at his hotel, then at the train station, handing the last ones through the window of his departing train. He reportedly threw his consul stamp to a refugee on the platform.
He saved an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 lives. When he returned to Japan, the Foreign Ministry forced him to resign. He spent decades selling light bulbs. He never spoke about Lithuania. When Israel honored him as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a journalist asked why he had done it. He said his father had taught him that if someone comes to your door, you help them.
Three cables said no. He needed zero cables to say yes.
"Perhaps the reason the Universe gave you a broken world is so that you could have a chance to fix it."