sony history

In September 1945, Masaru Ibuka returned to Tokyo to begin work in the war-damaged capital. A narrow room with a telephone switchboard located on the third floor of the Shirokiya Department Store (Tokyu Department Store which closed on January 1999) in Nihombashi became the new workshop for Ibuka and his group. Having barely survived the war fires, the building had cracks all over its concrete exterior. Without windows, the new office was small and bleak. Gradually, the office environment started to improve as the silicon steel boards, drilling machines and other equipment were transported from the Suzaka factory, and the personnel who had been tying up loose ends there joined the Shirokiya staff.

In October, Ibuka and his group established a new facility, called "Tokyo Tsushin Kenkyujo"(Totsuken), or "Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute." Although everyone was eager to work for the new company and to help rebuild post-war Japan with their engineering know-how, no one knew what to do at first.

Most of the salaries were paid out of Ibuka's small, and dwindling, savings. To stay in business, they had to do something. After the war, the Japanese were hungry for news around the world. Many had war-damaged radios, or ones that had had the shortwave unit disconnected by the military police to prevent from tuning into enemy propaganda. Ibuka's factory repaired radios and made shortwave converters or adapters that could easily make medium-wave radios into superheterodyne, or all-wave receivers. Demand for such radios was rapidly increasing.