Both ICOM and Kenwood have issued statements concerning the affect of the earthquake on their factories.
It appears Icom’s facilities at Osaka and Wakayama are in the south of the country and Kenwood’s primary office facilities in Yokohama and Hachioji are to the south and west of the quake’s epicentre. Kenwood’s primary manufacturing facility is located in Malaysia.
From the Icom press release at
http://www.icomamerica.com/en/features/earthquake.aspx
On March 11, northern Japan was struck by one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. Icom Inc. is an international company with its home base in Japan.
Fortunately, no one from Icom is known to be injured. There are no damages reported at Icom’s headquarters in Osaka or at either of our two main factories in Wakayama. Both Osaka and Wakayama are located far south of the most severely affected areas. Icom did suffer some minor damage at our Tokyo and Sendai branch offices.
Most of Icom’s facilities and systems are ready to get back to normal business. However, supplier logistics, commuting issues and future power disruptions will affect our company. It is too soon to tell how big an impact the earthquake and its aftermath will have on Icom. We appreciate your interest and concern for Icom Inc. and will update you as information becomes available.
We are fortunate that most of the Icom family has so far survived this crisis intact. Other families have not been so fortunate, and many lives have been lost. Crisis relief donations are requested through the American Red Cross at http://www.redcross.org/ . Google has also posted a helpful crisis response page on how to get involved.
The Kenwood statement says
http://www.kenwoodusa.com/NewsArchiv…1-bb97d0fff096
“Thankfully, our staff in Japan is safe due to earthquake preparedness and the special construction of our buildings,” said Junji Kobayashi, President of Kenwood USA Corporation. “Power outages and interruption of mass transit have kept most of Kenwood’s staff at home since the earthquake however we expect the infrastructure to improve in the coming week and our operations to fully resume accordingly. We appreciate the concern for our employees expressed by all those who have contacted us.”