Princess Mikasa, the oldest member of Japan’s royal family and great-aunt of the emperor, died in a Tokyo hospital on Friday at the age of 101, the Imperial Household Agency said.

He had been hospitalized since March after suffering a stroke and pneumonia and was recovering following treatment in intensive care.

Born into an aristocratic family on June 4, 1923, Yuriko Takagi was 18 when she married the younger brother of wartime emperor Hirohito.

The couple had five children, two girls and three boys. She gave birth to her first daughter in 1944 during World War II.

According to Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the imperial couple’s house was burned down in an air raid and the woman had to stay in a shelter with her baby.

Hirohito, who served as Japan’s commander in chief during its brutal march through Asia in the 1930s and ’40s, surrendered in a speech in August 1945 after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.