- Beate Sirota
Beate Sirota Gordon (born in
Vienna ,October 25 ,1923 ), former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society and ofAsia Society , and a member of the team that worked underDouglas MacArthur on theConstitution of Japan .She is the only child of pianist
Leo Sirota , a UkrainianJew who had fled war-tornRussia and settled inVienna ,Austria . Sirota's family later emigrated toJapan , where Leo Sirota taught at the Imperial Academy of Music (nowTokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music ) inTokyo . She attended theAmerican School in Japan and lived in Tokyo ten years until she moved to Oakland,California , in 1939 to attendMills College . During World War II, she was cut off from her parents who remained in Japan. During the war, she worked for theForeign Broadcast Intelligence Service of theFCC , for theOffice of War Information ,Time Magazine . As soon as the war ended, she went to Japan in search of her parents. She was the first civilian woman to arrive in post-war Japan. At that time, being fluent in Japanese, she worked forSCAP as a translator.When the U.S. began writing a new constitution for Japan, Sirota was enlisted to help and, as one of only two women in the room, the other being economist Eleanor Hadley, played an integral role in writing into the Japanese Constitution legal equality between men and women in Japan. In 1947, Sirota was a target of Major General
Charles Willoughby 's yearlong investigation of Leftist Infiltration where he tried, but failed, to construct a case against Sirota charging her with advancing the Communist cause within the new government of Japan (Bendersky, 2000, p.400).Sirota currently resides in New York City and uses her married name, Beate Sirota Gordon. She often makes appearances at schools, universities, and other institutions in the United States and Japan, giving lectures about her life.
References
* Beate Sirota Gordon. "1945 Nen no Kurisumasu" (『1945年のクリスマス』). Tokyo: Kashiwashobo, 1995. ISBN 4-7601-1077-1
** originally published in Japanese under the title: "1945 Nen no Kurisumasu", given literary form in Japanese by Makiko Hiraoka
* Beate Sirota Gordon. "The Only Woman in the Room - A Memoir". Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997. ISBN 4-7700-2145-3
* Bendersky, J.W. "The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army". NY: Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-00616-3External links
* [http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/law/lawresources/TUJonline/ConstitutionandGov/beateandJapaneseConst.html Biography] (by Kuniko Fujisawa, Temple University Japan)
* [http://www.asij.ac.jp/japan/asij_authors/e_g/gordon_b_bib.htm Biography] (by Lindi Geisenheimer, ASIJ: American School in Japan)
* [http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/gordon.html Beate Sirota Gordon (1924 - )] (Sunshine for Women)
* [http://www.beatesirotagordon.info The Gift from Beate] (Blog about Beate Sirota Gordon and the documentary film "The Gift from Beate")
* " [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TceZiTqyZXI The Only Woman in the Room] " (Beate Sirota Gordon speaks atMiddlebury College . @ Youtube 80:16)American Jews :Austria-bio-stub
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