Hiroshi Kashiwagi signed copies of his book at Buddhist Church of San Francisco’s Ginza Bazaar. Photo by J.K. Yamamoto

Asian American Curriculum Project has announced its publication of Hiroshi Kashiwagi’s second book, “Shoe Box Plays.”

The book contains nine plays that chronicle the experiences of Japanese Americans from the hardships of the Great Depression in the 1930s, through the bitterness and dislocation of the World War II internment, through the rise of Asian American consciousness and pride in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Kashiwagi grew up in Placer County and was interned at the Tule Lake camp. He wrote plays and poetry while working for the San Francisco Public Library and raising three sons with his wife, Sadako.

He has appeared in the documentaries “Meeting at Tule Lake” and “Rabbit in the Moon.” As an actor, his credits include “Hito Hata,” a drama set in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and Philip Kan Gotanda’s play “The Wash.”

Philip Chin of AACP describes some of the plays featured in the book: “ ‘Laughter and False Teeth’ is perhaps the most famous of the plays ... since it was included in ‘The Big AIIIEEEEE!: An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature’ (1991), a staple book used in college Asian American studies classes across the country. Procuring false teeth in an internment camp becomes a tragicomic observation of the breakdown of morality and decency in such places where even the dentist has to be bribed to do substandard work.

“ ‘Kisa Gotami’ (The Parable of the Mustard Seed) has the distinction of being George Takei’s first role as an actor, a decade before his pioneering work as Sulu on ‘Star Trek.’

“ ‘The Betrayed,’ a play that was included in Hiroshi’s earlier book published by AACP, ‘Swimming in the American,’ is perhaps the most powerful work, presenting ... the fundamental conflicts between those Japanese Americans that cooperated with the government to prove their loyalty as Americans during the years of internment and those that resisted because the government had violated their rights as Americans.

“These are just a few of the plays in this book composed over the past 60 years and stored literally in a shoe box.”

Summer interns of the National Japanese American Historical Society will do a reading from “The Betrayed” on Sunday, Aug. 10, at 2 p.m. at the NJAHS Gallery, 1684 Post St. in San Francisco’s Japantown.

To order the book, call (650) 375-8286, go online to asianamericanbooks.com/vssales.htm#shoeboxp or visit AACP at 529 E. 3rd Ave. in San Mateo (call ahead for an appointment).