Beate Sirota Gordon commencement address woman who helped Mccarthur to write Japanese Constitution

She was one of 65 caucasion Japanese speaking people in america .She was in Mills college as a studentfrom japan who had lived in a household with servants and had not learned how to do laundry and iron pleated dresses.find her way in america and learned to be american by learning to do ordinary chores like all Americans with the help of other students.

As a senior in the university she and a team was asked by general mccarthur to write the constitution for japan in seven days.

Having learned how to do the research she went to library and got 8 constitutions of several countries.

She was also assigned the job of writing womens rights as part of the constitution.She became most popular woman in the group of constituent committee.

when the Constituition draft was completed the Lt col in charge of the group told her that she had given more rights to Japanese women than the American women had. Her answer was that one she was not writer of US constitution and no women were the writers.

Later she was assigned the job of double checking the Japanese constitution for the spirit of the draft

She said she was proud that Japanese constitution allowed its people only to defend not attack any nation. As the discussion moved to rights of the women they were adamant that it was against the Japanese tradition and culture.Once the american colonel told the Japanese interlocutors that Miss Sirota the cute and friendly translator has her heart set on having these become part of the constitution ,thats how women got more rights in Japan guranteed by the constitution.


That is how sometimes constitution is written.