This week: the world's oldest person, an activist for war prisoners and a baddie of wrestling
THE world's oldest person, Japanese woman Chiyo Miyako, who has died aged 117, was born on May 2 1901 and became the world's oldest person in April after Nabi Tajima, from the Kikai island in southern Japan, died aged 117.
Her family called her "the goddess" and remembered her as a chatty person who was patient and kind to others, according to Guinness World Records, which had certified her title.
She enjoyed calligraphy, which she had practised until recently, and eating sushi and eel. She started learning calligraphy as a child. She also had the chance to travel because her husband, Shoji, worked for Japanese National Railways.
Guinness World Records said the successor to Miyako's world record had yet to be confirmed.
The Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said 115-year-old Kane Tanaka, of Fukuoka, southern Japan, was the country's new oldest person.
The world's oldest man, Masazo Nonaka, of Hokkaido in northern Japan, has just celebrated his 113th birthday.
Japanese women have the world's highest life expectancy of 87, while the men's life expectancy is in the world's top 10, according to the World Health Organization. The reasons are attributed to factors including the traditional Japanese diet and good health care.
Jeanne Louise Calment from France holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest person ever. Born in 1875, she was 122 when she died in 1997.
ACTIVIST Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, who has died aged 93, uncovered proof that thousands of Japanese-Americans incarcerated in the United States during the Second World War were held not for reasons of national security but because of racism.
Herzig-Yoshinaga's discovery of a 1942 document in the National Archives revealed that approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans were not sent to camps around the country for national security concerns.
The real reason, according to the document, was because Japanese cultural ties led the authorities to believe it was not possible to tell spies from law-abiding citizens.
The revelation led to a 1988 executive order from President Ronald Reagan offering apologies and $20,000 payments to each of those incarcerated.
Bruce Embrey, co-chair of the Manzanar Committee, which is dedicated to educating and raising public awareness about the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during the war, said that Herzig-Yoshinaga died on July 18 at her home in the Los Angeles.
THE wrestler Josip Peruzovic, who has died aged 70, was a WWE Hall of Famer known for playing the villain Nikolai Volkoff.
World Wrestling Entertainment said Peruzovic was one of the greatest villains sports-entertainment had ever seen. He was known for singing the one-time Soviet Union's national anthem before matches and for his tag team alliance with another wrestler known as The Iron Sheik.
WWE said his career spanned the better part of 40 years and featured showdowns with wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan.
In 2006, Peruzovic made an unsuccessful run for a House seat in the Maryland General Assembly.
Born Josip Nikolai Peruzovic in Yugoslavia to a Russian mother and Croatian father, he sought asylum in the Canadian embassy in Austria during a trip with the Yugoslav national weightlifting team. His real ambition was to be a boxer like his hero Muhammad Ali but by the 1970s he was an established wrestler. Ironically for someone who had defected, the character he played was a Communism-loving Soviet who hated everything American. The wrestling fans loved it.
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