Densho Digital Archive - Mary Blocher Smeltzer Interview (denshovh-smary-01-0012)

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RP: Mary, can you share with us a little bit, a little bit more information about other hostels in the Chicago area?

MS: Uh-huh. I know that the Quakers, Friends, American Friends Service Committee had one on the north side, ours was the west side. And then different denominations had hostels in other towns, other cities, too. And I don't know for sure which ones, maybe Minneapolis or Cleveland or Cincinnati, I can't remember.

RP: But this is, yours was the only one that was actually sponsored by the Church of the Brethren?

MS: Yeah.

RP: And what other support did they give you? What other support did you get from the church in running the hostel?

MS: Well, they paid for all the expenses.

RP: They paid for all the bills, everything?

MS: Oh, yeah, they did, uh-huh. And, 'course, we managed it, and we, we handled it all. And I don't, Elgin must have some record someplace to say what we got paid, I don't even know that.

RP: I wanted to get a little more of a picture of how the Bethany Seminary was set up as the hostel. Did, did people have individual rooms or did they...

MS: Well, they, they had to stay on the floors where the single women or the men were. And they had apartments around there for the family, but they didn't stay there. They had to stay with the single men and the single women, like it was one floor for the women and one floor for the men. We had an apartment on the first floor. And we just, we had a little office there, we had room for an office. And we had, Virginia Morimitsu was our secretary, and she kind of ran the office and took care of correspondence, and people had to apply to get there, you know, from camps.

RP: Right, right, you had to fill out an application and be cleared to come.

MS: Yeah.

RP: How about, can you give us a little insight into the, the feelings of people when they arrived in Chicago? Were they nervous, were they anxious?

MS: Yeah, I think they were scared. And as I think I said since we were talking, the parents were more worried, and we started out with the young single people. And, of course, eventually, we had families.

RP: Parents were coming out.

MS: Yeah. And then there was Oshimas, I think they had two or three children. And then there (were the Yatabes), I think it was (Yatabe), that they had one boy, young man, I think he became... or maybe the father was a dentist, I can't remember all the details either. But we had, when we were at Bethany, there was a house a few blocks away where I think some of them got to stay. And...

RP: What would you say the average time of stay at the hostel was? Several weeks?

MS: I can't remember, I really don't know. I think a week or two, though. But it'd take 'em a while to get a job and to find a place to live. I think a week or ten days. And you know, there was one man came there, I remember, and he got sick. And this man was half German and half Japanese or something. And I think his name is Mr. Minowa. And I took him down in our car to the big hospital, and boy, they just looked daggers at him. And they didn't want somebody that was half German and half Japanese, but they took him, and he got all right. But he was a very nice fellow, too. But I know it was quite a little...

RP: An issue for a while?

MS: Yeah, kind of, a little. Didn't know for sure what to do.

RP: You said earlier that you would, that you would try to attempt to locate a place to stay for these people?

MS: Yeah. We helped them find apartments. The government finally set up an office in Chicago.

RP: The WRA.

MS: Yeah. And they, they helped them get jobs. And I remember, you know, I can't remember what we said before you started recording. Anyway, a lot of 'em worked at the Kuneo Press, and a lot of 'em worked at Curtiss Candy Company. But I don't think jobs was a problem. It was really more of a problem to find apartments and a place to live.

RP: And so how did you go about doing that?

MS: Well, we just started out from when we were at Bethany, around that area. And then when we got up north, when we moved up to that big mansion, I remember walking around up there, too, in that area.

RP: Just knocking on doors?

MS: Well, I just can't remember, really. You know, it's so long ago, and it didn't last so long either. And by the time we got to Brooklyn... in Brooklyn there was a, J. Henry Carpenter, I think his name was, and he was in the Brooklyn Council of Churches. And funny, I don't remember walking around at Brooklyn finding places for them to live much. I just remember running the hostel. And we weren't there very long either, May to August isn't that long.