Japanese Pioneers

Masami Tomono was born in Nagano Prefecture in 1913. On graduating from the Faculty of Science at Tokyo Imperial University in 1938, he took up a post at Hitachi, Ltd. (the Hitachi Factory). After joining Hitachi’s Central Research Laboratory as a researcher in 1942, he became manager of the second department of the Laboratory in 1960, manager of the design department of the Musashi Factory in 1962, general manager of the Musashi Factory in 1965, and general manager of the semiconductor business division in 1969. He was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1971. After serving as the general manager of the electronics business group and a member of the executive board in 1973, he was transferred later in the same year to be a senior managing director at Hitachi Denshi Engineering, Ltd., where he was subsequently made president.

After being engaged in research into selenium rectifiers from prewar days, he started working on transistors at the Central Research Laboratory from 1951. He is thus one of the pioneers in the development of semiconductor technologies in Japan. Soon after Hitachi’s conclusion of a technology licensing agreement with RCA in 1952, Tomono embarked on a long business trip to RCA, where he learnt a great deal about technological issues through vigorous discussions of design with the engineers over there. After being transferred to the Musashi Factory in 1962, he developed an aggressive strategy as a manager. In particular, his leading role in the mass production of LTP transistors brought him the Best 10 New Products Prize of the Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, the Mainichi Industrial Technology Award, the Okochi Memorial Grand Technology Prize in 1969, and the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1971. He also put LSI circuits for calculators into mass production with the aim of increased sales, and Hitachi became a leader in this field, going on to surpass Fairchild for sales in 1973 to attain third place in the world after TI and Motorola.

A scholarly, sober, and fatherly kind of person, his traditional Japanese hobbies included haiku, kouta (old Japanese ballad-type songs), and Igo (go), and he loved golf.