World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbasePrince Takahito was born in 1915 as the fourth son of Emperor Taisho and Empress Teimei of Japan. He attended the Gakushuin school between 1922 and 1932 and the Japanese Army Academy between 1932 and Jun 1936. He subsequently graduated from the Army Staff College. In Dec 1935, Emperor Showa, his older brother, gave him the authorization to start a new branch of the Imperial family, Mikasa. In 1937, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant 1st class. In 1939, he was promoted to the rank of captain. In 1941, he was promoted to the rank of major. On 22 Oct 1941, he married Yuriko Takagi, the second daughter of Viscount Masanori Takagi; they would have five children. Between Jan 1943 and Jan 1944, he was attached to the headquarters of the Japanese Army's China Expeditionary Army in Nanjing, China. He criticized the atrocities committed by his fellow comrades against the Chinese, but was unable to stop them; he might have known the deployment of biological weapons in China, but again was unable to influence the stop of their use. In the final year of the war, he was first attached to the Army Section of the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo and then was given charge of the training of the personnel of the air branch of the Japanese Army. He rose to the rank of major by the end of WW2. After the war, he urged Emperor Showa to abdicate before the Privy Council. In the late 1940s, he began studying archeology, Middle Eastern studies, and Semitic languages at the Tokyo University. He was a guest lecturer in many universities in Japan and other countries in Middle Eastern studies and archeology.

ww2dbaseSource: Wikipedia

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