Interpreter who wove women's rights in the fabric of Japan
Douglas MacArthur assembled a fair-sized galaxy of talent after WWII to help reshape a defeated Japan, and that included giving the country a constitution for its post-feudal existence. But the US general could not have imaged that one of the most important contributors to the process would be 22-year-old female interpreter on his staff. Sirota Gordon was the daughter of a Ukrainian-born concert of some renown who had grown up partially in Japan, and was "the only woman in the room" (the name of her autobiography) among the two dozen men on the constitutional committee. Almost single-handedly she drafted articles 14 and 24 of the document, giving Japanese women the civil rights they had not previously possessed. After a 50 year veil of silence her military superiors began talking about it and she became something of a heroine in Japan. There is no provision in the US constitution guaranteeing women the rights they enjoy in Japan.
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