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HM: Alright. I guess we'll just start out with you, having you say your name and when you born, and tell us a little bit about your background.

HC: My name is Harold, also known as Hal, Champeness, and my first trip to Bainbridge Island was when I was six weeks old in 1923. And we lived here about a year and a half and moved back to Seattle for a while, and then back out when I was about four years old, lived in Seabold. For many, many years we only rented. And started school at Olympic School on Day Road, and then the following year, at second grade, we enrolled at Lincoln grade school.

HM: How did you get there, from Seabold all the way to Lincoln?

HC: There were school buses. At first, when we were at Olympic, they were kind of primitive. They had, like, chicken wire on each side of this thing. But first grade at Olympic, on the first day of school Akio Suyematsu and I shared a desk. Then they arranged people around so it wasn't quite that crowded. When we got to Winslow one of the first friends I made was Jerry Nakata, and also Hana Minichi came from Olympic, and Sada, and Sakasa Sakuma, Mitsu, Lefty Katayama. Before we became a full fledged class, which is when we were entering seventh grade, then some scallywags from Eagledale and Pleasant Beach joined us, and from then on there was nothing holding us back. A great class. In high school, well, in school, there not being anything to do on the island, the school was my life. We lived in Seabold and later in Manzanita, but school was our world. There were sports, and there was some drama, and orchestra for a while, and that kept me pretty busy. When we graduated, Sada Omoto was our president, and God, there were some smart kids in there, Tom Kitayama, and Kete Okazaki, Mitsu, I can't think of his last name, Lefty we called him. Minami went on to become a surgical nurse and worked for the doctor who operated on President Eisenhower. Whether she was in on that I don't know, but now you talk to her and pure Texas. [Laughs] I can't recall who the rest of the Japanese kids were, but we got along famously. There wasn't much intermingling after, after school 'cause we lived so far from each other.

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