Home/Fukui/Tsuruga/Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum

Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Port of HumanityChiune SugiharaPolish orphansTsurugarefugees

Photo: 663highland / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5) · original

A quick walk through Port of Humanity Tsuruga Museum tells you less than a slow one — the details are where the history actually lives.

Tsuruga was the Japanese end of a shipping route from Vladivostok, and twice in the twentieth century that made it a place where refugees came ashore. In 1920 and 1922 several hundred Polish orphans, stranded in Siberia, were brought through here on their way to Poland. In 1940 and 1941 Jewish refugees carrying transit visas issued in Lithuania by the Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara — issued against his instructions — arrived at this quay.

The museum reconstructs the port buildings of the period and tells both stories through the documents, the visas and the recollections of Tsuruga residents, who by several accounts fed and bathed people arriving with nothing. It is a small museum about a very specific thing: what a town did when people turned up. It costs ¥500 and is next to the red brick warehouses on the waterfront.

What to know before you go

When to go

Year-round | Indoor museum

Opening hours

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Last entry 4:30 PM

Closed: Closed Wednesdays, or the following day when the Wednesday is a holiday | New Year

Time to allow

60 minutes | 2 hours with the red brick warehouses

Fee

¥500 general | ¥300 elementary school age and under | Free for children under 4 | Group rates for 20 or more

Reaching the site

Getting there in detail

Tsuruga. By the Gurutto Tsuruga loop bus from JR Tsuruga Station, or by taxi. Closed Wednesdays, or the following day when the Wednesday is a holiday, and over the New Year. Admission ¥500 general and ¥300 for elementary school age and under; free for children under 4 and for visitors with a disability certificate plus one companion. Group rates for 20 or more.

Historical notes & tips

**Two separate stories, twenty years apart.** The Polish orphans of 1920–22 and the Sugihara visa holders of 1940–41. The museum treats them together because the same quay and in part the same townspeople were involved. **Look at the visas.** Sugihara issued transit documents in Kaunas in defiance of his ministry, and reproductions are displayed here. The scale of what a signature meant is the exhibit. **Closed Wednesdays.** With a holiday shift. Tsuruga's other waterfront attractions are open, so a Wednesday is not a wasted trip to the area. **It is next to the brick warehouses.** The 1905 Tsuruga Red Brick Warehouse, now a diorama museum and restaurants, is a couple of minutes away and makes a natural pairing on the waterfront. **Allow an hour and expect it to be sober.** This is a small museum about displaced people. It is not long, and it is not light.

View on Google Maps