Complex sentence: There was an urgent need to have this kind of research group studying programming languages because there were neither accessible computer equipment nor books on computing in bookstores and FORTRAN could be used in Japan on a few computers which at that time were all imported.
Split into simpler sentences: There was an urgent need to have this kind of research group studying programming languages. However, there were neither accessible computer equipment nor books on computing in bookstores and FORTRAN could be used in Japan on a few computers which at that time were all imported.