Jason P. Hyland, Deputy Chief of Mission

Jason P. Hyland became Chargé d'Affaires ad interim, U.S. Embassy Tokyo, on January 18, 2017. He had previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission there since July 2014. Mr. Hyland is a member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor.

Mr. Hyland has worked and studied in Asia for 17 years, most recently as Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy Canberra, from 2010 to 2013. He has served at U.S. Embassy Tokyo, U.S. Consulate General Sapporo, and U.S. Consulate Fukuoka, the latter as Principal Officer, 1995-1998. He was Special Assistant in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Department of State, 1998-1999, and has worked in the Office of Japanese Affairs. He received a Group Superior Honor Award from the Department of State for serving on the first Embassy team that entered Kobe in February 1995 to assist Americans after the Great Hanshin Earthquake.

Mr. Hyland has worked extensively on political-military issues. His prior assignment was as Foreign Policy Adviser to the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa, based at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. He received the Department of Defense Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award. Mr. Hyland served as Provincial Reconstruction Team Leader in Mosul 2007-2008, and received a Superior Honor Award and the Expeditionary Service Award for his work in Iraq. He was the Director of the Office of South Central European Affairs in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, which oversaw our diplomatic relations with the Balkans. Other assignments include Deputy Chief of Mission, U.S. Embassy Baku, Azerbaijan, and Political Counselor at U.S. Embassy Kyiv, Ukraine. Mr. Hyland also received a Superior Honor Award for his work with the Central Asian states during the first years of their independence.

Mr. Hyland speaks and reads Japanese. He has been a Visiting Foreign Scholar at the University of Tokyo and also studied at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo, administered by Stanford University. Mr. Hyland holds a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from the National War College (Class of 2000); Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; and Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of California, Berkeley, where he received High Honors in History for his thesis on Japanese history and studied the Japanese language. Mr. Hyland has been a Fellow at the MIT Seminar XXI Program. His other foreign languages include Ukrainian, Azerbaijani, and Spanish.