The Foreign Service Journal, March 2008

when his father was assigned as a lawyer with the U.S. Army Trials of Japanese War Criminals conducted in Yokohama in 1947. He lived in Japan until 1954, when he graduated from high school and returned to the United States to attend the University of Pennsylvania. After graduating in 1958, he served in the U.S. Army, 82nd Airborne Division, for three years before joining the Foreign Service in August 1961. During his Foreign Service career, Mr. Featherstone became fluent in Japanese. He served two tours in Tokyo, the first in the mid-1960s under the legendary Ambassador Ed- win O. Reischauer, and the second from 1978 to 1982 as political-military affairs officer under Ambassador Mike Mansfield. Following that tour, he served as U.S. consul general in Okinawa for four years. He had earli- er served in Okinawa, under U.S. administration since the end of World War II, from 1968 to 1970 with the U.S. Civil Administration of the Ryukyus, which paved the way for the return of the island to Japan in 1972. He also served as vice consul at the consulate general in Kobe-Osaka and, later, as director of the American Cultural Center in Niigata. In addition to several tours in Washington, D.C., Mr. Featherstone spent two years as economic officer at Embassy Bridgetown. He retired in 1979, but was recalled to service as director of the State Department’s Japanese Language and Area Training Center in Yokohama from 1993 to 1998. Following that tour, he retired permanently. Mr. Featherstone was an avid bicy- clist and often biked to work. He and his two sons-in-law, Tim Walsh and Terry Ward, enjoyed many bike rides together in Washington, D.C., and on family vacations at Bear Lake, Pa. He was also a hiker, scuba diver and sailor, undertaking sailing trips in the British Virgin Islands and the Grenadines. He especially enjoyed walking his Airedale terrier, Jasper. Mr. Featherstone is survived by his wife of 48 years, Katherine Briggs Featherstone of Arlington, Va., whom he met in high school in Yokohama; two daughters, Lisa Walsh of Golden, Colo., and Laura Ward of Newburgh, M A R C H 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 75 I N M E M O R Y