Hal Foster, an Actor with a Minor Role in Godzilla 1985, Passes Away

 Hal Foster in June 2016. Photo by Brett Homenick.

American freelance journalist and former actor in Japanese entertainment Hal Foster Jr. passed away in Idaho on Wednesday afternoon, June 10, following a massive heart attack and stroke that occurred about a month ago, according to his daughter. 

Hal appears briefly in Godzilla 1985 (1984) during the meeting between the Russian and American ambassadors and Prime Minister Mitamura (played by Keiju Kobayashi). Hal plays an American diplomat seated to the right of U.S. Ambassador Rosenberg ("He's right!"). Hal wrote about the experience in this 2013 article, which is how I found out about him.

About his part in Godzilla 1985, Hal would write:

In the scene I’m in, the ambassadors of the three countries and their deputies are in a big conference room engaged in a lively discussion about whether to unleash the first nuclear weapons against a “hostile” since the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their deputies, including me, are looking on stone-faced with concern. It’s not a great scene for those playing the deputies to show off their acting abilities. 

But I did a great job of following the director’s instruction to look worried. A true artiste, I told myself. 

By the way, the actor playing the Soviet ambassador looks like a scraggly Lenin. Talk about type-casting. If memory serves me, he wasn’t Russian, either.

I got to know Hal quite well in 2016, which is when he moved back to Japan. We met several times, and we talked about his various exploits in Japan during the 1980s. Naturally, very little was about Godzilla, but his memories were rather amusing. By the end of 2016, Hal had already moved on to another country. He never seemed able to remain in one place for very long.

We last communicated via Facebook on May 21, after he had suffered his heart attack. He seemed in good spirits and expected to recover. We discussed an interview about his memories. Unfortunately, his health would soon take a turn for the worse.

Hal Foster in June 2016. Photo by Brett Homenick.

According to his LinkedIn page, Hal earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, a master's degree in journalism from Ohio State University (in Columbus), and a Ph.D. in journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. For more of his background, here's Hal's summary of his professional career from his LinkedIn page:

I've been lucky enough to be a journalist at some terrific news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Pacific Stars & Stripes in Tokyo, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Portland Oregonian, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and the Omaha World-Herald. 

I've also been a journalism professor in the United States, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Moldova. Two of my teaching positions were endowed chairs, and another was a Fulbright professorship. 

I wrote about the Ukraine war in 2014 for USA Today, which asked me to report from there because of my four years as a journalist, professor and media consultant in the country. I've done freelance writing and editing in two dozen countries in Europe, Asia and the former Soviet Union. 

I've also been a media consultant in Japan, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Bosnia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. And I judged the multimedia category of the Hong Kong-based Society of Publishers in Asia's Annual Journalism Excellence Awards competition.  

For almost two decades I have been helping journalists in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union who have been under duress because of their work. A new wrinkle in my journalist-advocacy work is helping open anti-fake-news centers in Romania and Moldova.

I hope to get more details about Hal's life from his daughter. When I have more to share, I'll post an update. Thank you very much for your friendship, Hal. RIP.

UPDATE (8/9/20): Hal Foster's son Daniel recently got in touch with me to share additional information about his father. His comments have been reproduced below with permission:

My father was born on January 10, 1945, in Panama City, Florida. However, he grew up mostly on Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue, Nebraska, and stories from classmates about East Asia sparked his interest in the region; many had spent time in Japan with military parents on assignment there.  

Although my father loved adventure and learning about the world, he was most passionate about journalism, freedom of the press, and teaching aspiring journalists the nuts-and-bolts of writing and editing, as well as journalism ethics. He also loved helping others: he once fund-raised to pay for an operation to save the eyesight of a journalist that was attacked and he also had a major daily donate a printing press to a paper in Ukraine. And he started a journalism scholarship at the University of Nebraska in honor of a former mentor.