Hi again, this is Morizo.

First, please let me convey my sincerest condolences for those who have lost their lives in the torrential rains and flooding in Japan earlier this month. The disaster’s impact and damage can be felt all over Japan. Additionally, I would like to express my heartfelt sympathy to the people and their families who are most directly affected by the disaster.

Especially in Kumamoto Prefecture, one of the worst-hit areas of the torrential rain, our Toyota dealers have encountered flood damages, and some of those stores have had to stop operations. Furthermore, it has come to my attention that there are dealership staff members who are shedding sweat to try and resume their operation and to aid in the recovery of their local communities, despite their own individual circumstances where their own homes have received damage. I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your efforts.

Team members of our Motomachi Plant saw this situation and tried to provide what aid they could to these affected dealers. They represented the plant and put things in motion. While paying due consideration to ways that would avoid the possibility of group infections from COVID-19, these team members delivered the 100 face shields and 8,000 masks they had in their stock to the dealers in the midst of this disaster, taking into account the fact that the dealer staff were most likely spending their time off from work at evacuation shelters. One extremely thoughtful gesture came in the form of homemade video messages from some Motomachi Plant team members, natives of the hardest hit area of Kumamoto Prefecture. The team members hoped to cheer up colleagues through the video message, giving the message the theme of “Together as One”.

Despite conditions where everyone was struggling to even pull their own lives back together, the dealer staff worked diligently to bring cars as fast as possible to their customers. Moreover, the team members at the Motomachi Plant, by putting things in motion without waiting for anyone to give them directions, truly showed how sincere their feelings to be of use to the dealer staff were. This story deeply touched me; it was an outward display of what I meant when I implored our team members to do “something for someone other than themselves.”

Please let me extend my personal thanks to all the dealer staff and the Motomachi Plant team members! We would like to continue to support those in the affected areas so that they would be able to return to their normal everyday lives, helping them to live their lives and put a smile back onto their faces as soon as possible.

Together as one, we will keep doing our best, and, reflecting that sentiment, please let me close using a phrase that means these same things in the local Kumamoto dialect: “Ganbarubai!”