by BEATE SIROTA GORDON
‘You’re a woman, so why don’t you write the women’s rights provisions?’
Many millions of people had their own Pacific War stories and now, 75 years after the war ended, most of those people have died. Here from the 50th anniversary – the last big milestone when many were still alive – are the recollections of one of them: the American who put women’s rights into the postwar Japanese constitution. She’s introduced by veteran Tokyo news correspondent and frequent Asia Times contributor Roger Schreffler, who invited her and a large number of others to share their memories at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in separate appearances around the 1995 anniversary.
“Beate Sirota Gordon (1923-2012) was the daughter of Leo Sirota, a famous Russia-born Jewish concert pianist who moved his family from Vienna to classical music-loving Tokyo in 1929. One of his first recordings for Japanese Columbia was this one; the Sirota family is pictured:
“A decade later, the Sirota parents, concerned about an increase in Nazi influence in Japan, sent Beate to the United States. She studied at Mills College in Oakland, California.
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