During the 1880’s, Jews also settled in Nagasaki. By the turn of the century, Nagasaki was the biggest Jewish community in Japan. Kobe, by that time, had a functioning Jewish community with religious institutions and a Zionist organization.
In 1923, Yokohama suffered a great earthquake, and later in the century, trade in Nagasaki declined, causing Jews in those communities to move to Kobe, which is now home to the oldest surviving Jewish community of Japan.
Even though Japan was far from most other Jewish communities when it first opened its gates to foreigners, it is not hard to understand why Jews ended up there as merchants. Since the Diaspora, Jews have been living as a minority in diverse lands. Often, they have been denied the rights to own land, serve in the military, and take part in government. As a result, many made trade their main occupation. By trading, they found that they could prosper without having to settle down in one place.
By Constantly traveling, the Jews learned many cultures and languages, and left relatives scattered throughout towns and countries, giving them an edge in international trade. Thus, their long history of trading expertise made them assets to countries such as Japan, which hoped to advance their own economies.
Well before World War II, there was a comparatively large Jewish presence in Kobe. Trade brought both Sephardic Jews from Baghdad, Iraq and Aleppo, Syria, and Ashkenazi Jews from Poland and Russia. In addition, many Russian Jews who were fleeing pogroms landed in Kobe. The first synagogue in Kobe was established in a rented house.
With the outbreak of World War II, Jews were stuck in Kobe, unable to travel or conduct business. However, they received comparatively good treatment at the hands of the Japanese authorities. The Chief of Police of Kobe told the community they had nothing to fear in Japan.
The Japanese accepted a large influx of Jews into Kobe during World War II. Even though Japan was allied with Nazi Germany, the community of Kobe helped save Holocaust refugees from 1940 to 1941. In particular, Jacob Schiff, a Jewish financier who raised huge funds for Japan during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, helped the Japanese tremendously and demonstrated to them that Jews were good in business and possessed strong worldwide contacts.
Other Japanese individuals helped save Jewish refugees for purely benevolent, humanitarian reasons. Yosuke Matsuoka, the Empire of Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs during the early stages of World War II, let the Jews stay as long as the Kobe local police acquiesced to their presence in the city.
Perhaps the most famous person who helped save Jewish lives during the Holocaust was Sugihara Sempo, the Japanese Consul to Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1940. That summer, ignoring foreign ministry cables ordering him to desist, Sugihara issued transit visas to about 6,000 Jewish refugees from both Poland and Lithuania. These refugees were supposedly on their way to a Dutch colony in the Caribbean that did not require entry visas, but they were permitted to stay as transit passengers in Kobe for as long as they needed. Those who could not find a country to accept them were allowed to settle in Hongkew, the Japanese-controlled section of Shanghai, where they spent the duration of the war. In 1985, Sugihara, at age 85, was honored in Israel at Yad Vashem, and a grove was planted in his name near Jerusalem.
Between the years 1939 and 1941, several thousand Jewish refugees passed through Kobe. The most famous of them were probably the 300 teachers and students from the Mir Yeshiva in Poland. With Japan’s help, it became the only yeshivah that fully survived the Holocaust.
Shanghai had a relatively large Jewish population of 6,000 before the war. During the war, the Jewish population grew to 18,000. Compared to their fellow Jews in Europe, the Jews in the Far East were treated incredibly well.
A refugee camp for Jews, known as the Hongkew Ghetto, was established in Shanghai in 1943 and most of the Jewish refugees moved there. These Jews were allowed to leave the ghetto during the day to work, and they were not persecuted. The Japanese saved thousands of Jewish lives.
