
Hiroshi 柏木 Kashiwagi, “Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected writings”, 2005 was the autobiography of Japanese-American writer & actor Hiroshi Kashiwagi. Hiroshi 柏木 Kashiwagi (born 1922, died 2019) in this memoir (96 years of life): describes his childhood in the twnties, the Great Depression years of the thirties, and the World War II years of the forties.
During World War II, Kashiwagi and his family were sent to “Tule Lake” internment camp after Executive Order 9066 of the year 1941. Kashiwagi and others at “Tule Lake” lost their American citizenship under the “Renunciation Act” of 1944. In the post-war years Kashiwagi and 5,000 other “Tule Lake” internees had their citizenship restored. In 1954, Kashiwagi wrote the play “Laughter and False Teeth”; and, this was the first play set inside a WW-II Japanese-American internment camp. From 1966 to 1987, Kashiwagi worked for the San Francisco Public Library at the Western Addition Branch (in Japantown San Francisco).
Hiroshi 柏木 Kashiwagi, “Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected writings”, 2005 was the autobiography of Japanese-American writer & actor Hiroshi Kashiwagi. The film “Hito Hata: Raise the Banner” (1980) still-photo (shown above) shows Hiroshi Kashiwagi acting. Below is aphotograph of Kashiwagi in his later years. I saw him 18 March 2006 when he was the Little Tokyo Branch “annual author recognition” recipient of the Los Angeles Public Library.
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