VILNIUS (AFP)---Japanese Emperor Akihito and his wife Empress Michiko have visited in Vilnius, Lithuania, a monument to Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who during WWII defied the orders of the Japanese government by issuing exit visas to thousands of Polish, Lithuanian and German Jews, allowing them to flee Nazi occupation.

Sugihara was based in the southern Lithuanian city of Kaunas during the war.

“I told the emperor that Sugihara issued just 2,139 visas, but they saved more than 6,000 lives," Lithuanian Foreign Minister Petras Vaitekunas said.

Vaitekunas said Akihito asked how the site in Vilnius where the monument stands was related to Sugihara.

"I told him that in fact Sugihara worked in Kaunas, but the place where the monument stands is the place where common values meet, and this is important because Lithuanian and Japanese hearts come together here," Vaitekunas said.

During his visit to Lithuania, the Japanese Emperor praised the courage of Lithuanians in the face of occupation and other hardships.

"We go back in our memories to the hardships of World War II and later history which was full of trials, and are deeply impressed by the courage and dignity with which your people met all the troubles," Akihito said in a speech at a luncheon in his honour at the presidential palace.

He also stressed that restoration of independence of the three Baltic states in 1991 was "an exclusive event that marked the great flow of the history".

Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko were in Vilnius on the fourth leg of a visit to Europe which has taken members of the Japanese royal family into former Soviet territory for the first time.

The European tour of the Japanese imperial couple began Monday in Sweden, before moving on to the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.