Kane Tanaka
We met Kane Tanaka at her nursing home in Fukuoka, Japan in October 2018, five months before Guinness World Records named her the Oldest Person in the World.
It seems the sight of us prompted her to recall the trip she had taken decades earlier to visit family who had relocated to the United States.
She was tiny, dwarfed by the young male attendant who walked with her up and down the hallway. For a portion of our visit and as she did each day, Kane sat at a table completing a math worksheet, her mind seemingly as sharp as it ever was.
Kane held the record for being the oldest person in the world from July 2018 until her death on April 19, 2022.
In April 2022, just weeks before she passed, she became the second oldest person in the world ever, a record that had been held by Sarah Knauss since 1999.