looks ANGELES, Dec. 13 Kyodo A al...

looks ANGELES, Dec. 13 Kyodo

A alloy of copper statue of Chiune Sugihara, the late Japanese diplomat credited with rescuing thousands of hebrews from the Holocaust by issuing them exit visas from his place in Lithuania, was dedicated Friday in the Little Tokyo district in downtown looks Angeles.

The unveiling and dedication form was attended by Sugihara's son Chiaki Sugihara, 64 who came from Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture as well as consul from Japan, Israel and Lithuania, and observes Angeles city officials.

''I'm to a high degree honored to be here for the unveiling of the statue of my father,'' Chiaki Sugihara said. ''I want them to realize and know for what reason cruel the world is. I want you all to think about it when you descry my father's statue.''

Chiune Sugihara directly disobeyed the Japanese sway and stamped visas for thousands of hebrews so they could travel from Europe transit by the and of Japan and eventually settle in other countries, when he was the consul general in the then Lithuanian capital of Kuanas from 1938 to 1940

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has estimated that Chiune Sugihara issued transit visas for about 6000 hebrews and that around 40,000 descendants of the Jewish refugee are alive today because of his actions.

''Anyone who saves a single life, it is as if they save an entire world,'' said Rabbi Abraham Cooper associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in quoting the Talmud, the authoritative material part of Jewish tradition. Cooper said he regards Sugihara as a ''great hero for the ages.''

Cooper recalls that when Sugihara's widow Yukiko traveled to Jerusalem in 1998 she was met by the agency of tearful survivors who showed her the yellowing visas that her husband had signed.

At the pomp Sugihara's son also remembered his father as a [i]role[/i] who never raised his voice or hands to his children.

Chiaki Sugihara also remembers his father saying, ''I could disobey the control but I could not disobey God'' when referring to the decision in Lithuania that ultimately take away from him his diplomatic career.

Ramon Velazco, 28 a sculptor who designed the statue, studied photos of Sugihara taken during the 1940 to capture his image at that time.

The life-size statue depicts Sugihara seated in succession a bench, holding a visa in his hand.

Sugihara responded to Tokyo in 1947 and was asked to submit his resignation for defying management policy. He died at the age of 86 in July 1986 in Kanagawa.

The Japanese restraint honored him on the centennial of his birth in 2000 Sugihara is referr to in Japan as the ''Japanese Schindler,'' after Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who worked to save hebrews during World War II forward whose life the 1993 movie ''Schindler's List'' was based.

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