<Begin Segment 27>

DG: Kiyo, let's, let's start again talking about the YWCA group that you helped start called the Bellami Group.

KS: Yes, uh-huh.

DG: And we were talking about some of the activities that.

KS: Yes, don't forget, these girls went to school in camp and, the camp provided food, but the food was in mess halls and if they ate at home, it was on little homemade tables and benches that their fathers must have made for them. So, I remember one time one of the girls said that oh, it would be nice just to learn how to introduce somebody. Mother, this is my friend, Janice. Janice, this is my mother. And little things like that which I think if they weren't in camp, they would have had opportunity to practice and say. It would just be a thing that nobody even thinks about. But in camp, you just assume everybody knows everybody and so the niceties of life just weren't there. And I think the girls felt a need for something like that. And, and for the first three years of Bellami, it was delightful for me to even find out what the girls wanted to know. Things that I just took for granted. It was nice to be able to share, and in the meantime, the girls, many of them developed leadership skills, because I never ran all of the meetings. The girls elected officers and they had committees and they assumed those kind of responsibilities themselves and so. I felt that it was a nice social group. It did get all of the young Japanese girls from different high schools to get to know each other too. And I do know that...

DG: Was there a prewar high school group like that?

KS: No, no, no. No there weren't.

DG: Where did they learn those things prewar then?

KS: Well, I, I think before the war, they must have learned at home.

DG: At churches and...

KS: At churches and our, their home.

DG: of course, the Girl Scouts?

KS: Yeah, they were all, they were Girl Scouts or Bluebirds or something like that and. Because I know that when we were at the... when I, when I got to know the Japanese girls, it was after they went to the University and they certainly knew then because...

DG: Now did these Bellami girls you think went on and maybe formed Valedas?

KS: Well, the core of the girls that formed the Valedas were all girls that were Bellami. When they went to the University, they found there was no (group). Because Fuyokai did not reactivate at the University (after the war). There were a lot of independent groups at the University or, (fraternities) maybe at that time, they still were not welcomed into the sorority life or anything like that, but there, there was no group that they could belong to, so I think that, that they felt a need for some social group that they could, so they formed Valedas.

DG: So did it have its own bylaws?

KS: Yes, yes. I had nothing to do with the...

DG: You were asked to it and you were somewhat opposed to.

KS: Well, I didn't want to reactivate the Fuyokai group and I felt that since I didn't do that, I didn't want to also... and I was busy, I had, I still had the Bellamis.

DG: But you said there was something to do with the, you thought that they should integrate more, too.

KS: Well, I felt that they could. The opportunities were there and certainly, I knew that their parents were able to...

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.