<Begin Segment 34>

DG: Now, back to the Girls Reserve, the first group we talked about. There was a little competition between the Portland girls and the Seattle girls, was there?

NS: No, not too much competition. It was just that there were just a different group of girls. I don't know why...

DG: Well, you mention in your letter that the girl who kind of took charge was from the country and was from neither Seattle or Portland and you thought that was good.

NS: That they were what?

DG: This girl, I think her name was Suzie Takimoto, you said she was from the country and she was neither from Seattle or Portland, which made her a good leader. And I wondered what you meant by that.

NS: [Laughs] I think there was always some rivalry between the Portland and the Seattle girls as to -- now, why that would be, I couldn't say, excepting that there were -- they were the same, I guess. But then, just the rivalry, like being from different cities, you felt it more or something.

DG: I saw somewhere something about the purpose of the Girls Reserve and some YWCA thing. Something about the girls need to belong to something, and that's one of the reasons why this was encouraged.

NS: (Yes). Well, I think that when there is a thing like camp where people are just put together -- and I think girls who are just growing into adolescence and young womanhood need to feel a sense of belonging someplace. And I think that that's the group that I was probably talking about that didn't have their feet on the ground yet and needed to have something concrete, and that going out into the different cities as secretaries or workers of some kind was to be good for them.

DG: Now, one of the first activities that I noted was that you're decorating a recreational hall for them, so that they can have a place to get away.

NS: Uh-huh.

DG: What was that about?

NS: Well, when you're in with a family -- with your own family in a room where the beds and the cooking stove and the warming stove and all your brothers and sisters were all around -- it's kind of nice to go into a separate room where it's more quiet and people can meet in their own age and talk about things that interested you more than -- and then not have the family hear everything. I think that privacy is something that we all enjoy. So that was one of the reasons why having a separate room for such an activity was almost a necessity.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.