Beate Sirota
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Beate Sirota Gordon (born in Vienna, October 25, 1924), former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society; a member of the team that worked under Douglas MacArthur on the Constitution of Japan.
She is the only child of pianist Leo Sirota, a Ukrainian Jew who had fled war-torn Russia and settled in Vienna, Austria. Sirota's family later emigrated to Japan, where Leo Sirota taught at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. She attended the American School in Japan and lived in Tokyo ten years until she moved to Oakland, California, in 1939 to attend Mills College. During World War II, she was cut off from her parents, and as soon as the war ended, went to Japan in search of them. At that time, being fluent in Japanese, she began working for SCAP as a translator.
When the U.S. began writing a new constitution for Japan, Sirota was enlisted to help and, as the only woman in the room, played an integral role in writing into the Japanese Constitution legal equality between men and women in Japan.
Sirota currently resides in New York City, and uses her married name, Beate Sirota Gordon. She occasionally makes appearances in schools and universities in the United States and Japan, giving lectures about her life.
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
- Biography (by Kuniko Fujisawa, Temple University Japan)
- Biography (by Lindi Geisenheimer, ASIJ: American School in Japan)
- Beate Sirota Gordon (1924 - ) (Sunshine for Women)
- The Gift from Beate (Blog about Beate Sirota Gordon and the documentary film "The Gift from Beate")
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