The oldest person in the world climbed a mountain when she was 100 years old, without even using a walking stick.
After the sad death of 117-year-old Maria Branyas Morera earlier today (August 20), Tomiko Itooka, 116, from Japan, is now officially the world’s oldest living person.
Tomiko was born in 1908 in Osaka City, as the second of three children. At the age of 20, she got married and raised four children – two daughters and two sons. During the Second World War, Tomiko operated the Japanese office of her husband’s textile factory, balancing the work there with raising the kids on her own. When her husband died in 1979, Tomiko lived alone in his hometown of Nara Prefecture.
READ MORE: World’s oldest person dies aged 117 after sharing her heart-breaking final words
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(Image: Gerontology Research Group)
Over the next few decades, she was a frequent climber and scaled legendary mountains such as Mt. Nijo and Mt. Ontake. Perhaps her greatest physical achievement was scaling the long stone steps of Ashiya Shrine at the age of 100, without even a cane to help her.
Her resilience is well documented. At the back end of last year Tomiko survived a serious health scare after a nasty bout of the flu left the supercentenarian battling for her life.
The previous oldest person in the world, Maria Branyas Morera, died peacefully in her sleep after sharing a heart-breaking message with fans.
(Image: LongeviQuest/Youtube)
“The time is near. Don’t cry, I don’t like tears. And above all, don’t suffer for me,” Maria said on the social media account, which is run by her family. “Wherever I go, I will be happy.”
Guinness World Records officially acknowledged Branyas’s title the oldest person on earth in January 2023 after the death of French nun Lucile Randon who died aged 118.
Maria lived through the 1918 flu, World War One and World War Two and Spain’s civil war, and even got Covid-19 in 2020. Her youngest daughter, Rosa Moret, has attributed her mum’s longevity to “genetics”.
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