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DG: And then, let's go on then to your forming the Bellamis.

KS: Oh, yes. Well, that, through my YWCA connections there were parents of many young teenage girls that came out of camp and they were quite concerned about their daughters. Their daughters were going, all of a sudden going from an all-Japanese school in camp and they were going to Garfield and West Seattle and Queen Anne and Franklin, and they felt quite lost amongst the young kids in school. Then they may have known each other, but not very well in camp. In camp, depending on the area that you lived in, I don't these Japanese girls. Some of them may have been friends before they came to Seattle, but that didn't help them when they went to high school and they felt like they were out of the... other girls in high school would talk about the parties they went to, and the dances and what they did last week and things like that. And the parents also were struggling to get their own businesses going and they didn't have time to do very much for their girls, but they could see, 'cause the parents had been through this. When they were young, there were mixers and parties and, and all kinds of group activities that they could go to and here, their daughters had nothing. And they could see that their girls were lonesome and needing something. And so, when some of the parents told me about it, then I talked to the people at the YWCA and the YWCA had a program called a Y-Teen Club. And they would form young girls clubs in various high schools and so, they told me to join their Y-Teen department as a, as a person who could help form a Y-Teen group among the Japanese girls. And I said well I could certainly try and do that. So I gathered and with the cooperation of their parents, there must have been about twenty girls at the first. And we talked about what kind of a club we could have. Oh, they were quite enthusiastic. And then we contacted girls from...

DG: What year was this?

KS: This was in 1946, yeah. 1946, the year after. And that was, it would be the fall of '46. So I had already been in Seattle for at least a year and it was that next year that... because all, all those girls were in school for almost more than half a year and that's when they could see that they were missing out on some things. And I would meet with the girls once a week and we would meet at Collins Playfield or sometimes we'd go to the old congregational church, they had room for us when Collins Playfield had a basketball game or something like that going on. And first we just got together and talked about what we wanted to do. And then it would branch out to well, let's get together and have a roller skating party, or let's get together and go on a boat and have a cruise. Well that came quite a bit later, that cost money. But we would go down to the beach together and sometimes we would go to the playfield and they would play baseball, 'cause I remember I would bring my little boy with me and he would go chase after the ball and most of the idea of the Bellami Group was that, and we would talk about setting tables. If we had a dinner party, what would we do? Things, things that maybe the parents didn't have time, or their facilities at home. I'd bring some dishes and a table cloth and things like that and we, we would...

DG: You said that in camp they never learned these things.

KS: No, they didn't.

[Interruption]

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.