After the successful bid to buy Polychrome, DIC management had a big plan for Polychrome future. Due to the contractual reason, PS plate business was off limit to DIC in Japan. But in film, it was a different story, there was no restriction so that the first move DIC proposed was to test market Polychrome film in Japan which backfired hugely. The first sample box of film tested at the most trusted important customer of DIC contained a racial notes inserted by someone in the finishing/inspection department of Clark plant. This of course angered the customer of DIC and gave a poor impression of Clark plant to DIC management. It also turned out that the Clark film did not fit Japanese market either. Japanese market was dominated by Fuji who designed their film like Eastman Kodak film while Clark film was patterned after then popular duPont film. DIC management had to save their face and decided assgin numbers of chemists to silver halide technology and hire ex Konica chemists as consultants to boost its "technology level". Although the purchase of Polychrome (and others such as Kohl and Madden, Sun Chemical and Rheicold Chemical) was engineered by Mr. S. Kawamura, the president, DIC's operation was still very much influenced by its founder Mr. K. Kawamura, the senior advisor. And it was Senior Kawamura's modus operandi to invest in technical personnel and fund the research out of his own budget separate from the operational division's budget till the division realizes the fruit of the research. (or till the division head is "encouraged" to find ways to absorb them.) So the extra help in research we received in Clark was not funded by Polychrome but by DIC. The research started in Tokyo and then the staff was moved one by one to Clark.
That was the background of when I was appointed to be the part time film R&D director. My appointment was most likely not because I was recognized as a competent film chemist but probably because I was a Japanese speaking chemist who could be a buffer and an intermediary between the many DIC chemists and the Polychrome management. Although I was hired as an electrostatic imaging specialist in the beginning, my basic training was in the photographic science and engineering at the only university in Japan where they had a department specialized in this small and obscure discipline.
So it turns out that I was not unprepared to understand the issues and the chemistry behind them.