We are Mazda

We are Mazda

Hiroshima: City of Peace

Mazda’s relationship with its hometown Hiroshima goes back to the 1920s. Yet it was one of the most devastating moments in the city’s history that really bonded the company to its people.

Hiroshima lost approximately one third of its population, with tens of thousands more injured on that fateful day in August 1945, which marked the beginning of the end of Japan’s involvement in World War II. In the bomb’s aftermath, Toyo Kogyo – as Mazda was then called – immediately began distributing medical supplies, setting up consultation centers around the city to help families reunite, and even went so far as to house the local government and national broadcasters at its plant for about a year.

Seventy years on and Hiroshima’s rebirth is a source of great pride for Mazda. “More than 50 percent of our employees are from this region, so we have a very strong wish to contribute to its society,” says Masahiro Moro, Managing Executive Officer of Mazda.

And while Hiroshima’s wounds may have all but disappeared the city continues to lead the way in the global non-proliferation campaign. In March 2014, Nobel Peace Prize winner and ex-Polish president Lech Walesa came to pay his respects to the victims of the bomb, stopping in at Mazda, a leading partner of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, to keep the conversation going.

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