Howard 's first posting as a member of the United States Foreign Service was in Japan , where he was a language trainee in Yokohama 1974 – 1975 , and then served as director of the American Center in Sapporo from 1975 to 1977 . From 1977 to 1980 , he was the press attaché of the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo . In 1981 – 82 , he was a cultural affairs officer of the American embassy in Warsaw . During that period martial law was declared in Poland . Howard was detained by the Communist government authorities three times and was ultimately declared '' persona non grata '' and expelled in May , 1982 . He then went to Cyprus where he was a public affairs officer at the American embassy in Nicosia . He was involved in the evacuation of Americans from nearby Beirut in the wake of the 1983 embassy bombing , the bombing of the embassy annex , and of the bombing of the Marine Barracks . His last two weeks in Cyprus were spent attempting to resolve the TWA Flight 847 hijacking . Howard returned to the United States in 1985 to serve as a public affairs adviser to the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the United States Department of State . He received the State Department 's Superior Honor Award for his work on the People Power Revolution in the Philippines in 1986
TWA Flight 847
TWA Flight 847
J. Daniel Howard