Born Minashi Khammo Pius on March 19, 1927, in Khatun Camp, Baghdad. He was forced to change his name to Mikhael after the 17 July Revolution in 1968 that ushered in Baathist rule because authorities believed his birth name Minashi sounded ‘too Jewish’. He was son of Khammo Pius and Soriya Kakko of Mavana, Targawer, Persia, children of the tens of thousands of Christian Assyrians who agreed to fight on the side of the Allies. They had been forced by Ottoman forces to abandon their homelands in modern-day Turkey and Iran and flee to the safety of refugee camps in Mesopotamia during World War I.