member_of_political_party matsushige ohno
Matsushige Ohno (   no Matsushige , born January 15 , 1936 ) is a Japanese politician . He was a member of the House of Representatives , and Senior Vice - Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications in the Shinz Abe cabinet . He served as the 3rd Mayor of Sayama from 1986 to 1994 . Hailing from a politically prominent family , at age 52 , Abe became Japan ' s youngest post - war prime minister , and the first to be born after World War II , when he was elected by a special session of the National Diet in September 2006 . Abe resigned on 12 September 2007 , for health reasons . Abe was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda , beginning a string of five Prime Ministers , none of whom retained office for more than sixteen months , before Abe staged a political comeback . Following the resignation of Prime Minister Shinz Abe , Fukuda was elected as President of the ___MASK94___ and became Prime Minister in September 2007 . Fukuda was the first son of a former Japanese Prime Minister ( Takeo Fukuda ) to also take up the post . World War II ( often abbreviated to WWII or WW2 ), also known as the Second World War , was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945 , although related conflicts began earlier . It involved the vast majority of the world ' s nations  including all of the great powers  eventually forming two opposing ___MASK99___ alliances : the Allies and the Axis . It was the most widespread war in history , and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries . In a state of " total war ", the major participants threw their entire economic , industrial , and scientific capabilities behind the war effort , erasing the distinction between civilian and ___MASK99___ resources . Marked by mass deaths of civilians , including the Holocaust ( in which approximately 11 million people were killed ) and the strategic bombing of industrial and population centres ( in which approximately one million were killed , and which included the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ), it resulted in an estimated 50 million to 85 million fatalities . These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history .