Can you help me find two men who served as Japanese translators in the USA in 1976?
I’d like to interview them, as well as give them historical credit by name for what they did.
I’m writing a book called “[Starring Rascal](https://starringrascal.com/)” about the influence of Wisconsin author Sterling North’s 1963 book “Rascal” and in particular, the worldwide popularity of the “[Araiguma Rascal](https://gojefferson.com/rascal/)” 52-episode anime.
In August 1976, the team from Nippon Animation (Masaharu Endo and Junzo Nakajima, directors, Yoshio Kato, producer, Masahiro Ioka, art supervisor) came to the USA for a several-week trip. They engaged in an early example of anime “location hunting,” visiting actual locations from a book to guide the art of their anime.
They may have landed in Detroit. The animation team hired two young men to serve as translator, driver and guide. They may have been university students. I don’t know if they were grad students, or from the USA or Japan. [I believe these are their pictures](https://imgur.com/a/a9kRgro).
They travelled several weeks, first to [Edgerton, Wisconsin](https://sterlingnorthsociety.com/), then north to Three Lakes, WI, then west to the Ashland and Bayfield, WI area (including the Apostle Islands), then west to Yellowstone National Park.
I’m hoping that someone remembers hearing about their travel story. If they were 22 in 1976, obviously they’d be almost 70 today.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/17sb9tb/help_me_find_two_men_from_1976_who_guided/