View the Chiune Sugihara ethical assessment profile
This assessment does not reduce the subject to one moral ranking. Each dimension is scored separately from −100 to +100 and must be read with its evidence and uncertainty.
Scorecard status: Recalculated under multidimensional system
The assessment covers the issuing of transit visas to Jewish refugees in Lithuania despite institutional obstacles and the foreseeable personal and professional risks of doing so.
The score evaluates documented public conduct during the stated period. It does not measure inherent human worth, does not constitute a legal verdict and remains open to correction when stronger evidence becomes available.
Sugihara used limited official power with exceptional moral courage when bureaucratic obedience would have abandoned refugees. His assessed conduct is exceptionally positive.
This assessment presents six separate ethical dimensions rather than one overall moral score. Each result must be read with its evidence, plausible range, confidence, disputes, exclusions, severe-harm findings and sources.
| Domain | Score | Intensity | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consequences | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high |
| Rights and duties | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high |
| Virtue and character | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high |
| Intentions | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high |
| Care | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high |
| Justice | +97.0 | 97.0 | B — high |
| Wisdom and judgment | +95.0 | 95.0 | B — high |
| Baseline ethics | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high |
| Positive pole | Negative pole | Score | Intensity | Confidence | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human dignity | Dehumanisation | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Human dignity and Dehumanisation. |
| Care | Neglect | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Care and Neglect. |
| Benefit | Harm | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Benefit and Harm. |
| Benevolent intention | Malicious intention | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Benevolent intention and Malicious intention. |
| Justice | Injustice | +97.0 | 97.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Justice and Injustice. |
| Respect for rights | Violation of rights | +98.0 | 98.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Respect for rights and Violation of rights. |
| Courage | Cowardice | +99.0 | 99.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Courage and Cowardice. |
| Wisdom | Ignorance | +95.0 | 95.0 | B — high | Calculated from 1 reviewed evidence item(s) concerning Wisdom and Ignorance. |
The evidence concerns decisive use of diplomatic authority to create escape routes for people facing persecution and likely death.
No substantiated grave ethical misconduct was identified in the assessed rescue work. Exact beneficiary numbers and the degree of formal disobedience are described differently across accounts.
SUG-C1
Transit visas enabled thousands of refugees to leave a region becoming increasingly lethal.
SUG-R1
He treated threatened refugees as people entitled to safety rather than as unwanted administrative problems.
SUG-V1
He continued issuing visas despite uncertainty, professional risk and the danger associated with defying restrictive policy.
SUG-I1
His decisions were directed toward enabling families to escape persecution and war.
SUG-CA1
He used the concrete tool available to him—official transit documents—to create real opportunities for survival.
SUG-J1
He resisted rules whose effect was to abandon a persecuted minority.
SUG-W1
He recognised that time and documentation were decisive and acted before the consulate closed.
SUG-B1
His conduct rejected the reduction of desperate families to nationality, paperwork or political inconvenience.
Survival depended on a wider chain of visas, transport and receiving states. The assessment credits Sugihara’s documented decisions without assigning him sole responsibility for every outcome.
Unsupported claims about precise motives, orders or total descendants of visa recipients were excluded.
No corrections have been recorded.