
Joseph Yoshinobu Takagi (1937-24 December 1988) was a Japanese-American businessman and the CEO of the Nakatomi Corporation. He was murdered by Hans Gruber's terrorist cell during the Nakatomi Tower heist of 1988.
Biography[]
Yoshinobu Takagi was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1937, and his family emigrated to San Pedro, California in 1939. He was interned at Manzanar from 1942 to 1943 before becoming a scholarship student at the University of California in 1955. He received his law degree from Stanford in 1962 and his MBA from Harvard in 1970 before becoming president of Nakatomi Trading, Vice-President of the Nakatomi Investment Group, and CEO of the Nakatomi Corporation. On 24 December 1988, he paid for a limousine service to take NYPD officer John McClane to his estranged wife Holly Gennaro-McClane at his corporation's holiday party at Nakatomi Tower in Los Angeles. That same evening, the terrorist-turned-thief Hans Gruber and his gang took control of the building, ostensibly as part of a left-wing terrorist attack. However, Gruber attempted to force Takagi to give up the codes to the tower's vault. Takagi was shot in the head after refusing; McClane would almost single-handedly take down Gruber and his gang and thwart their heist.