The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2011

J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 transit visa to reach Curaçao. When Tokyo denied him permis- sion to issue, Sugihara did so any- way, and continued to do so. He issued as many as 10,000 visas, even after receiving two more di- rect orders to cease his activity. Like all diplomats, Sugihara would have been cosmopolitan in his outlook (for instance, his first wife was Russian), but little in his background indicates why he decided to help Jewish refugees. Moreover, with his Japanese culture and as a diplomat, Sugihara’s com- pulsion to conform should have been doubly strong. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished However, the greatest threat that diplomats and con- sular officers generally faced came from their own gov- ernments for violating organizational discipline, as shown by Harry Bingham’s experience. He was far from the only diplomat to suffer such conse- quences. Two Swiss consular officers sta- tioned in Milan, Pio Perucchi and Candido Porta, together issued more than 1,600 illegal and unau- thorized visas to Jews who had fled Austria after the Anschluss, against the specific regulations and policies of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and police. As a result, Perucchi was not allowed to continue working at the consulate after March 1939, and Porta was demoted and transferred to a different section. After the Portuguese government fired its consul gen- eral in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, for issuing 30,000 visas, he lost his property and died in poverty. Feng Shan Ho was reprimanded by the Chinese ambassador to Germany, and Chiune Sugihara was forced to resign from the Japanese diplomatic service. F O C U S In 2006, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring Bingham as one of six “Distinguished American Diplomats.”