Beate Sirota
Beate Sirota Gordon (born in Vienna in 1924) was a member of a team that worked for Douglas MacArthur on the Constitution of Japan. She was the only child of pianist Leo Sirota, a Russian 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 lived there ten years until she moved to Oakland, California in 1939 to attend Mills College, returning afterward to post-war Tokyo to serve on the commission drafting the constitution. Beate Sirota Gordon played an important role in bringing in equality for women into Japan in its Constitution. Her biography is entitled The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir.
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