2. Materials used
We started this work by checking the book "East Coast of Siberia Pilot" (in Japanese, book number 201) published by Hydrographic Department of Japan Maritime Safety Agency. Then, we checked several bathymetric charts and atlases (English edition) published both in Japan, USA, Canada, and Russia. Descriptions, especially names of town, islands, straits etc., in these publications are often different from one another, and usually we could not find any standard names. So, we tried to find rules which are applied in the translation process from Japanese and Russian into English by checking various documents in the Mie University Library and in the Libraries of the Pacific Oceanological Institute and the Pacific Institute of Geography of the Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences. The list of standard names approved by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names was kindly provided to us by the library of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The results are given in Sections 3 and 4. In some documents, Japanese names are given in Chinese characters only. We checked various documents in the local material corner of the Mombetsu City Library to find their correct pronounciations. The names of detailed topographic feature off the Okhotsk Coast of Hokkaido in Section 7 are cited from "Coastal Oceanography of Japanese Islands" edited by Coastal Oceanography Research Committee, oceanographical Society of Japan (p. 2： Okhotsk Coast Area by Haruhiko Yamaji).
