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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Eleanor Josephine Danner Bilimoria 
April 26, 1985 
Cassette 4, Side 1 
 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  00:09 
April 26, the-- our-- Eleanor's second interview, and this is tape two, side one. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  00:16 
I am much too wordy.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  00:19 
No, no, no. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  00:25 
There were eight of us in a cabin for four. That was a crowded ship. When we got to-- well a 
couple of nights before we got into Boston Harbor, one of the Americans-- two of the American 
officers, or one American officer, lost two of his uniforms out of his suitcase. So then there was 
all this excitement. There probably was a German spy, or two German spies, aboard. So when we 
got to Boston, the FBI met us, and we all had to go through an interview with the FBI. So then 
Boston to Chicago, New York, Chicago, Seattle. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  01:21 
Kathy was born in September, September 13, and she was a little beauty right from the start. 
Proud mother. And while I was here that year, I stayed with my brother Earl and his wife and 
daughter and I studied nursery and kindergarten education with Helen Reynolds, who was the 
Seattle Director of Education-- of Kindergarten Education. And I stayed 15 months in the States 
and was made an honorary member of the Childhood Education Association. I never did 
anything about it. When I got ready to go back, the American government wouldn't let me go. 
But after I'd kept pestering this poor woman in the embassy or the State Department in 
Washington, D.C., to give me a visa to get back, or to give me my passport, I guess, so that I 
could go back to India, finally, she said, "If you can get a British passport, we won't say you can't 
go." Have another.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  02:39 
So I got a British passport, and in May of '45-- no-- yes, '45, I started back to India. And that 
time, it was another Dutch ship. And I thought, "Well, that would be great," that it would be 
clean and the food would be good and everything would be very efficient. Well, was I ever 
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mistaken. We sailed from San Pedro, but we were in Los Angeles a couple of weeks waiting for 
the boat to sail because, again, they wouldn't tell us a date. And my niece Hazel came up from 
San Diego, where she was living, and stayed with me to help take care of Kathy and so I could 
get some shopping done before I went back. Well, this boat was a dump. We were way down in 
the bottom. Had a cabin all to ourselves. And our lifeboat was way the opposite end of the ship 
on the top deck, of course. And it was filled with junk, broken chairs and this and that and the 
other thing; it was totally useless. Fortunately, on the floor above, deck above us, was a young 
girl... I was mistaken. I had a young girl in with us, and she was a pal of the young woman who 
had a smaller cabin to herself on the deck above us, and the two of them wanted to be together, 
so we changed, and that was great. The two of them got the deck below and I got the single up 
above, so then at least I could have a porthole out on the sea. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  05:09 
We went to Australia, and that was a long, long voyage. I'd have to go to the galley and sterilize 
the bottles and make the formula, and Kathy wouldn't let me out of her sight, and I'd wheel her 
around and around and around the deck to get her to go to sleep, and she wouldn't do it. But 
among the-- well, I don't know whether he was Australian or American. There were Australian 
soldiers on that trip. The other trip had been Australian war brides, and these were Australian 
soldiers going to someplace in the East. Anyhow, there was one very, very handsome fellow, like 
John Gilbert, and Kathy would put up her hands to him every time she saw him [they laugh]. 
And finally, after he'd see me go around the deck and around the deck and around the deck, 
getting grimmer and grimmer and grimmer, he'd take her. She'd cuddle right down and go sound 
asleep immediately.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  06:18 
So we went to Australia, and we stayed in Melbourne, we stayed and we stayed. And they told us 
the laundry hadn't come back, but we found out later there was a German submarine outside the 
harbor just waiting for us. So when they got tired of waiting and left, we left, and we hit a 
hurricane, and it took us eight days to go the width of Australia. One night-- oh, the sea was so 
rough. And one night, I heard this terrible noise, crashing glass and swishing water, and I had a 
Kiddie Koop for Kathy. Do you know what that is? Well, it's a baby's crib that's all wired 
netting, screening on all sides, so that you lift the lid and put them in and out and close the lid 
and they're stuck [they laugh]. But I thought it would be good for all the bugs in India. Would 
keep the scorpions and whatnot out. To say nothing of mosquitoes, etc. So Kathy was in her bed, 
and the bed was going back and forth [laughs] across the cabin. Oh, and then the water began to 
seep in under the door, so I went out in the hall and the carpet down this hallway had humped up 
right in front of my cabin door, so that was why the water was coming in. So I rang the bell and I 
rang the bell and I rang the bell. No stewards. Everybody was busy. So finally I got out and just 
pulled until I got it flattened out and water not coming into my room. Finally, Kathy went to 
sleep, and I decided, well, I could leave her a few minutes. So I went down to see what had 
happened, and the lounge of the bow had glass windows all the way around, and 14 of those had 
broken, and the water was pouring in. Well [laughs], I thought I-- we had a better lifeboat at that 
time, but it was still a long ways away, and I decided I would go down with this ship before I 
would get into a lifeboat in that sea. So the stewards were all busy trying to get wood up to cover 
the holes in the windows, and of course, we turned the other direction so things were calmer. We 
weren't going where we wanted to go, but at least we weren't getting flooded with the water. So 
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then we went up to Calcutta. I wanted to go to Bombay. But in wartime, you don't-- you go 
where the boat takes you [they laugh].  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  09:35 
Where it's safe. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  09:38 
Ah. So we got to Calcutta, and it took me days to get a reservation on the train. I wanted an air 
conditioned compartment. Fortunately, one of Soli's relatives owned a hotel, the Grand Hotel of 
Calcutta, so I had a room there. And the bathroom was so large I could wheel the baby carriage 
in when I took a shower [laughs]; it was just huge. So we had a-- not a very good trip going 
back, because I finally gave up getting air conditioned and just took a plain train. So by the time 
we got to Bombay, Kathy had lost a third of her birth weight and was covered with prickly heat. 
So we were glad to arrive. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  10:39 
That was '44. '45, what did I do in '45? We moved out to Nepean Sea Road, where we had this 
view of the Arabian Sea. In three bedrooms-- in every bedroom in India that is a so-called upper 
class -- at least, the people who live like Europeans -- every bedroom has a private bathroom. 
Way ahead of the United States in that feature. So the girls had their own bedroom. One of the 
interesting things that happened while we were living at Nepean Sea Road, at breakfast one 
morning, we could hear this horrendous swish and sort of a thunderous noise, and we jumped up 
and ran to the little balcony we had facing the sea, and the tide had gone out so far, you could see 
all of these black rocks where the fishermen would go out at night and get lobster and crab by 
torch. And then it started rolling back, thunderous tidal wave. And my first thought was, "Thank 
goodness we had the office car. I could get Kathy to high ground." And then I realized that it 
wasn't that high a wave, and we wouldn't need to evacuate. And it came in, and then it swooshed 
out again and came back in. There had been an earthquake in the sea about 630 miles off 
Bombay. And there was a Hindu temple further down from us with a little narrow causeway, 
which, when the tide was out, was dry and underwater when the tide was in. And there were 
several people washed away there. And in Karachi, it had hit very bad, and there had been, 
[coughs] excuse me, a number of people killed there, drowned. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:14 
Oh, there are so many things I did in India, that it's hard to know what to tell you. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  13:20 
So you had had your second daughter.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:23 
No. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  13:24 
No, not yet. Okay. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  13:26 
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She came along in 1947, February 4, 1947. And that summer, with all of the things that I had 
brought back from America on childhood education, I discovered that several other mothers in 
the American Women's Club wanted to start a nursery school. So we started this cooperative 
school, and we called it West Wind for two reasons. One, we wanted to bring Western 
educational ideas into India, and the west wind would blow in off the Arabian Sea about four 
o'clock every afternoon. And that was the thing everybody lived for in this heat, was to get this 
cooling breeze. And we had it in Betty Martin's home at first. We hired a young woman, young 
Muslim woman, as our teacher, and we had monthly meetings of the mothers to establish what 
we were going to do. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  14:50 
The Montessori system was prevalent in India at that time, and I had visited some of those 
schools, and it was very, very strict. And I remember a little girl sitting with a little wooden shoe 
that she'd laced up. Well, when she finished it, she just sat there and waited for somebody to 
come along and say, "Well, that-- you've done that now," and take it away and give her 
something else to do. Well, in our school, the youngsters were buzzing around, just busy, busy, 
busy. We had artwork and housekeeping corners and music and sandboxes and places to slide 
and run their tricycles and just do all sorts of things. But then Betty Martin, her husband was in 
the Consulate, and they had to move. That's the worst thing about living in these countries and 
making friends with Americans and English people, because they keep moving off and leaving 
you, and you always have this anguish [?with?] friends are going. So then we needed a new 
place to establish our school, and I had discovered that there were two-- well, one sort of a 
Quonset hut place, only [laughs] it was brick with a cement floor right on the sea and another 
little shack. And it was on the estate of a very wealthy Parsi gentleman. So I said we should go 
and call on Mr. Petit and see if we can't use these, because these two buildings had been erected 
by the army, and then the army moved on and left them, and they were just empty. So we called 
on him one afternoon, and, "Yes," he said we could have it. There would be no rent, and we were 
free to use it. And there was a lovely trail down the side of his estate with gorgeous, big palm 
trees, so that we didn't have to go through his garden to get to it. And the second little shack we 
fixed up with the thunderboxes and whatnot. And I got carpenters to build the equipment that I'd 
brought the diagrams back from the States. So we had slides and swings and climbing apparatus 
in this lovely grove of palm trees right on the ocean. And so the children had the beach to play 
on and the crabs and seashells and things, and we planted radishes and whatnot in our little 
garden, and they had lots of place to play. We had a piano there, although I had to take the piano 
home during the monsoon keep it dry. And we hired a bus so that it went around and picked up 
the children every morning. And we had to hire an ayah to ride with them and take care of toting 
them to the little room. And each day, a different mother took part. When Betty left, I sort of 
took over the administration, and then the youngsters grew, and so we had to establish a 
kindergarten, and then they grew, and we had to have a first grade, and had to hire another 
teacher. And I trained her. And we had Parsi children and Hindu children and Swiss children and 
Dutch children and English and American. So it was a nice mixture, and they learned songs in 
different languages and picked up each other's language. And the last I heard, it was still 
functioning.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  19:16 
Really? 
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Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  19:17 
Yes, Ms. Curmally, the woman I had hired back in '41 was here in the States, oh, five years ago 
and she telephoned me. I was so glad to hear from her. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  19:32 
Yeah, Eleanor, I missed why-- why was it such a nice combination of a variety of children? Was 
it just happened in that town or that area, or was that on some sort of...?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  19:44 
Well, Bombay's a very-- at least at that time was, and I expect, still is, a very cosmopolitan city. 
That was one of the fascinating things about it, because you had people of all nationalities and all 
religions.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  20:06 
In the meantime, India had been working toward its independence. And... Oh, there's many 
things I could tell you. I don't know what to say. Sir Stafford Cripps had come out, and we had 
high hopes, but he had seen one person at a time, and he'd said, "Now, when you go out, the 
photographers will be waiting, and we must smile and laugh and be friendly for the pictures." So 
they always did that. So he and the Muslims' leader would come to an agreement, and then the 
next day, he'd meet with a Hindu, and the agreement would be all off. And they never had the 
idea of getting everybody to sit down to the table at the same time and come to an agreement. 
Now, when I'd gone out in '41, there was no talk of the division of India. There was no talk of 
Pakistan. And then Jinnah began to appear in the newspapers putting forward this idea of a 
separate state, Pakistan, "the Land of the Pure." And then it became-- it snowballed. And even 
though the President of the All India Congress Committee was Azad, a Muslim, who was not for 
partition at all, Jinnah was adamant, and unfortunately, independence was granted to a divided 
India one year before Jinnah died. [Laughs] If they'd held off another year, they might have 
saved it.  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  22:02 
So in '47... I don't remember when the Mountbattens came out, but in-- they were there to bring 
about the transition, and in '47 India got its independence. And we went to a very nice party 
where we were to go-- arrive at British India and leave at independent India. So that transition 
took place at midnight. So we partied all night that time. And then the rioting began. Really, 
really, really, in all this terrible transition of Muslims moving to Pakistan and Hindus moving to 
India, and that is a story that is so well known, I don't think I need to dwell on that. And then 
there was Gandhi's assassination. Soli and I were at a movie that night, and the back doors of the 
theater opened onto a balcony sort of thing. The windows there were open to let in fresh air, 
because you couldn't have the fans going very well when the movie was on. And the film was 
about three quarters through, and somebody said, "I think there's trouble outside." And I said, 
"Yes." You could hear the shouting of the crowds outside the theater, and he says, "They're 
saying, 'Gandhi.' We'd better get out of here." So we left, and of course, other people were 
hearing it by that time, and a lot of people were leaving. And as we drove home, lots of people 
on the streets and shouting, and then storekeepers were all putting down their steel shutters over 
their glass windows to keep from getting broken. Because previously in Bombay, we'd had-- or 
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maybe it was afterwards. Oh, dear, I need dates on this. Busses set-- overturned and set a fire. 
And I remember going up to the grocery store once, which was on a circle where five streets 
came in, and here was a tank right in the middle of the place. So we got home and listened to the 
radio, and Nehru came on with his very wonderful, eloquent speech that Gandhi was dead, that 
the light had gone out. Oh, and there are all the times when Gandhi was arrested and imprisoned 
that I should tell you about, too. I'm sort of running down here. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  25:09 
You getting short for time?  
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  25:11 
It isn't the time; it's my throat.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  25:13 
Oh, I see, okay, should we take a rest for a minute or for the day? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  25:19 
Yes. [Tape cuts.] 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  25:22 
I don't remember the date for this, and I'll have to find out from Soli, but they had been-- it 
probably was in '42 after the Congress meeting. They were rounding up all of the Congress 
bigwigs. We had gone to the club to play badminton Sunday morning before breakfast, and then 
I think we had breakfast at the club. And as we were driving back, Soli saw the British police 
cars, and he said, "They're going towards Birla House, where Gandhi was staying." And he said, 
"I think something's up." So we got home and turned on the radio, and they were telling how 
they were arresting these people. Some of them they'd arrested in the night, just to be sure and 
get them before they got away. Some of them did get away. So Gandhi was in prison and went 
on one of his fasts. And daily where they would come out the report of Gandhi's condition, 
whether he was taking orange juice or not. And his wife is in prison too, I believe, and she died. 
Oh, I have to think about that episode. But there's a tenseness in the atmosphere in situations like 
this that just pervades the whole community. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  27:11 
Was his wife fasting too? Is that how she died? 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  27:16 
I don't believe so. I have to check with Soli; he'll remember. And then this wedding, this was at 
one of the Maharaja's so-called palaces in Bombay, and in the circular driveway that came up 
before this huge marble floor and marble steps to the veranda, and on the veranda was a glass 
case with a tiger. And you don't say "stuffed," do you? What do taxidermists do to animals? 
Mount them. A mounted tiger in this glass cage. Well in the circular driveway, they had erected a 
paper mâché Mount Everest, because the bride here was a princess from Nepal and the 
bridegroom is the son of the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir and later became Maharaja 
himself. Usually when in America or Europe you go to a function, the women are dressed all in 
colors, brilliant colors, and the men are in black and white. Well, not at this occasion. You never 
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saw such colors on men. These Hindu men had brocades, gold brocades and pink brocades and 
green brocades. They were stunning. And these horrendous big turbans and jewels. Oh my, the 
jewels. I don't know what wedding it was, maybe it was this one; when we went up to see the 
wedding gifts, there were glass cases, a whole room full of them, of jewels. There'd be a set, a 
diamond set: a necklace, bracelets, earrings, rings. There'd be a ruby and diamond. There'd be an 
emerald and diamond. A sapphire and diamond set. Pearls. Oh! I'd seen the crown jewels of 
London in the Tower of London. Isn't that where they're kept? These were far more fabulous 
[laughs]. Oh. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:28 
Maybe we should stop, because then I can get things organized and not get them out of sequence.  
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  30:34 
Okay. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  30:38 
After the All India Congress Party Committee conference and I was coming back to America, I 
had to send everything that was written that I was taking with me and all of my photographs to 
the censor in advance. And when I got them back, all my pictures of Nehru and of Gandhi had 
been removed. 
 
Elizabeth Gallery-Fox  31:08 
Oh, my God. 
 
Eleanor Danner Bilimoria  31:16 
You can turn that off. 
 