The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada 

Interesting. Impressive courage to refuse direction from superiors, not sure I would have had the courage to do so:

Akira Kitade was about to retire after a lifetime of service at Japan’s tourist bureau, when his boss took a scrapbook off the shelf in his home and showed it to him. In it were photographs of his boss as a young man on a boat bound for Japan with Jewish refugees during the Second World War.

The discovery of the scrapbook, which included seven passport photos of young people, with personal messages in French, Bulgarian, Norwegian and Polish inscribed on the back, set Mr. Kitade on a quest spanning decades to find out who they were.

This week in Ottawa, at an event hosted by Kanji Yamanouchi, Japan’s ambassador to Canada, Mr. Kitade told how the mystery had finally been solved in Canada. A Montreal photographer had recognized a photo of a beautiful young woman in the scrapbook, sparking a train of other discoveries.

In an interview, Mr. Kitade described how the passport photograph, signed Zosia, with a note scrawled in Polish – “To a wonderful Japanese man – please remember me” – had haunted him. Her expression seemed to embody the anguish of Jews persecuted by the Nazis, he said, and he was compelled to learn her story….

Source: The winding tale of the Sugihara visas, that saved Jews from the Holocaust, led them to Japan and landed them in Canada