F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

I N
M E M O R Y
ernment and the Japanese language, as
preparation for the invasion and occupation
of Japan.
In September 1945, he went to
Tokyo for the occupation, expecting to
stay one year. Instead, Japan became
home to Mr. Bassin, his wife and two
young sons for more than a decade,
first as part of the U.S. Army and later
as a diplomat.
In October 1945, he was assigned
to Gen. MacArthur’s legal staff in
Tokyo, and became director of the Law
Division in 1946. Mr. Bassin was involved
in negotiating the peace treaty
and advised Gen. MacArthur on international
and occupation law, reparations
and repatriation of people displaced
during the war.
When the peace treaty with Japan
was finally signed in 1952, Mr. Bassin
was asked to join the U.S. Foreign
Service in Tokyo as legal attaché. In
that position, he was an important part
of the highly successful transition from
American military to Japanese civil
government.
Mr. Bassin was posted to Karachi in
1956 as first secretary and special assistant
on mutual security affairs. He
worked with the Pakistani government,
an important ally against the Soviet
Union and China, on military and intelligence
matters until 1960.
Having been overseas in hardship
posts for 18 years, Mr. Bassin and his
family spent the next nine years back
in Washington. He first served from
1960 to 1962 as the State Department’s
representative and a faculty member at
the Armed Forces Staff College in
Norfolk, Va. He then held a series of
senior State Department administrative
and personnel jobs until 1969,
when he was assigned to Geneva.
There he served as minister and
deputy chief of the U.S. Mission to the
United Nations for five years, becoming
chargé d’affaires in 1972 upon the
resignation of the ambassador.
In 1974, Mr. Bassin retired from the
U.S. Army Reserve as a colonel in the
Judge Advocate General Corps. He
retired from the Foreign Service in
1975, but was retained by the State
Department and USIA to represent
refugees and political asylum cases
from Latin America in the U.S. Immigration
Court.
Mr. Bassin was predeceased by his
wife of 62 years, Beatrice, in 2000. He
is survived by two sons, Art Bassin of
Ancramdale, N.Y., and Jay Bassin of
Silver Spring, Md.; and a brother,
Phillip.
Dominic A. Broccoli, 81, a retired
Foreign Service staff officer, died
peacefully at his home at Sun City in
Bluffton, S.C., on Dec. 23, 2008.
Born in Tarrytown, N.Y., on Sept.
25, 1927, Mr. Broccoli served in the
U.S. Navy during World War II. Prior
to joining the Foreign Service, he
worked at the United Nations.
Mr. Broccoli’s first post was Vietnam,
where he served both at the embassy
in Saigon and helped open the
consulate in Hue. His subsequent
posts were Daharan, the U.S. Mission
to the European Community in Brussels,
Taipei (where he met and married
his wife), Buenos Aires, Khartoum,
Tokyo, Rangoon, the New York Reception
Center, Lagos, Tehran and
Kuala Lumpur.
He retired in 1982 and then accompanied
his wife to posts in Rome,
Mexico City, Palermo and Casablanca.
Mr. Broccoli is survived by his wife
of 47 years, Winifred; their three children
(Marc of Bethel, Conn., Kiki of
Savannah, Ga., and Chris of Zurich);
and four grandchildren.
Samuel Edwin Fry Jr., 74, a retired
FSO, died at his home in
Olympia, Wash., on Dec. 14, 2008,
from complications of cancer.
A graduate of Dartmouth College,
with honors in international relations,
Mr. Fry studied at the University of
Edinburgh and earned his M.A. in political
science from the University of
Massachusetts. He served in the U.S.
Army Third Infantry Division in Germany
from 1958 to 1959, then joined
the Foreign Service.
During a 31-year diplomatic career,
Mr. Fry served as consul in Trieste
(1961-1963), economic officer on
the Soviet Desk in Washington (1963-
1965), consular officer in Moscow
(1966-1968), economic officer in Oslo
(1968-1971), office director in the
Operations Center (1971-1974) and
in the Office of Personnel at State
(1974-1977), deputy chief of mission
in Helsinki (1977-1981) and DCM in
Bucharest (1981-1983).
He participated in the Senior Seminar
(1983-1984), served in the Office
of the Inspector General (1984-1986),
directed the Office of Public Programs
(1986-1988) and was political
adviser to the U.S. Mission to the
United Nations (1988-1989). Mr. Fry
received the President’s Award for implementation
of policy changes toward
the Soviet Union during the
43rd session of the U.N. General Assembly.
Upon retiring in 1990, he pursued
many interests and activities. He
taught political science part-time at
the University of Alaska in Fairbanks;
he worked at the university’s Large
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