Beate Sirota

Beate Sirota Gordon
Born	October 25, 1923 (1923-10-25) (age 88)  Austria Vienna

Beate Sirota Gordon (born in Vienna, October 25, 1923) is a former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society and of Asia Society, and was 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 (now Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in Tokyo.^[1] She attended the German School for six years, until the age of 12, when she transferred to the American School in Japan as a result of her parents deeming the German School "too Nazi";^[1] she lived in Tokyo a total of ten years before she moved to Oakland, California, in 1939 to attend Mills College.

During World War II, she was cut off from her parents who remained in Japan. In the US in 1940, she was one of only 65 Caucasians who were able to read, write and translate the Japanese language.^[2]

During the war, she worked for the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), for the Office of War Information. She also worked for TIME magazine.^[1] As soon as the war ended, she went to Japan in search of her parents, who survived the war under detention in Karuizawa.^[1] She was the first civilian woman to arrive in post-war Japan. At that time, being fluent in Japanese, she worked for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) as a translator.

When the U.S. began writing a new constitution for Japan, Sirota was enlisted to help and was assigned to the subcommitee dedicated to writing the section of the constitution devoted to civil rights.^[1] As one of only two women in the room, the other being economist Eleanor Hadley, Sirota 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 A. Willoughby's yearlong investigation of Leftist Infiltration, in which he tried, but failed, to construct a case against Sirota charging her with advancing the Communist cause within the new government of Japan.^[3]

Sirota currently resides in New York City and uses her married name, Beate Sirota Gordon. She has two children, Nicole and Geoffrey Gordon. She often makes appearances at schools, universities, and other institutions in the United States and Japan, giving lectures about her life.

Contents 1 Selected works 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links

Selected works

In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Beate Gordon, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 150+ works in 150+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.^[4]

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• Introduction to Asian Dance (1964)
• An Introduction to the Dance of India, China, Korea [and] Japan (1965)
• 1945年のクリスマス: 日本国憲法に「男女平等」を書いた女性の自伝 (1995)
• The Only Woman in the Room: a Memoir (1997)

Oral histories

• The Reminiscences of Faubion Bowers by Faubion Bowers (1960), with Beate Gordon
• The reminiscences of Cyrus H. Peake by Cyrus Peake (1961), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Esther Crane by Esther Crane (1961), with Beate Gordon
• Occupation of Japan Project by Eugene Dooman (1970), with Beate Gordon
• The Japanese Reminiscences of Roger Baldwin by Roger Nash Baldwin (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Burton Crane by Burton Crane (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Douglas W. Overton by Douglas Overton (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Joseph Gordon by Joseph Gordon (1974), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Harold G. Henderson by Harold Gould Henderson (1976), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of Dr. Lauren V. Ackerman by Lauren Ackerman (1976), with Beate Gordon
• The Reminiscences of John R. Harold by John R. Harold (1976), with Beate Gordon

Notes

References

• Bendersky, Joseph W. (2000). The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army. New York: Basic Books. 10-ISBN 0465006183/13-ISBN 9780465006182; 10-ISBN 0465006175/13-ISBN 9780465006175; OCLC 44089138
• Dower, John W. (1999). Embracing Defeat. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. 10-ISBN 0393046869/13-ISBN 9780393046861; 10-ISBN 0393320278/13-ISBN 9780393320275; OCLC 39143090
• Gordon, Beate Sirota. (1995). 1945 Nen no Kurisumasu 1945年のクリスマス』). Tokyo: Kashiwashobo. 10-ISBN 4760110771/13-ISBN 9784760110773; OCLC 36090237
• __________. (1997). The Only Woman in the Room: a Memoir. Tokyo: Kodansha International. 10-ISBN 4770021453/13-ISBN 9784770021458; OCLC 38588852

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")
• The Only Woman in the Room (Beate Sirota Gordon speaks at Middlebury College. @ YouTube 80:16)
• Introducing Beate Sirota Gordon (Japanese university student introduces Beate Sirota Gordon to her peers in a classroom presentation)

Persondata
Name	Sirota, Beate
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	October 25, 1923
Place of birth	Vienna
Date of death
Place of death