Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tadahito Mochinaga (1919-1999) was a Japanese stop-motion animator. He is best known as the animation supervisor for Rankin/Bass productions including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), which he made at his MOM Production Studio in Tokyo.
Mochinaga worked on several Rankin/Bass Animagic productions: The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1960-1961), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964), Willy McBean and His Magic Machine (1965), The Daydreamer (1966), Ballad of Smokey the Bear (1966), and Mad Monster Party? (1967).
While working in China after World War II, Mochinaga was assigned to animate a propaganda comic by Hua Junwu. Facing severe shortages of paint and film, he built puppets to conserve paint and shot frame-by-frame to conserve film. The method was a success with audiences familiar with puppet theater, and stop-motion animation took root in China as a result.
Mochinaga served as assistant to director Seo Mitsuyo on Momotaro's Sea Eagles (1943), and was officially in charge of backgrounds and visual effects. The film was an animated propaganda piece depicting the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
After finding his home destroyed in a bombing raid, Mochinaga feared the coming American occupation might target propaganda filmmakers, and he also anticipated food shortages. He fled with his pregnant wife to Japan-occupied Manchuria, where both had family connections, less than a month before Japan's surrender.
Mochinaga stayed in China for roughly a decade after the war ended. He worked at the Northeast Film Studio in Manchuria and later spent three years in Shanghai, finally returning to Japan in 1954.