"Bits of Paradise," a work-in-progress adapted by Marian Warren from the Crusaders' scrapbook, will be presented Monday, Dec. 1, at 7:30 p.m. at The Marsh Theatre, 1062 Valencia St. in San Francisco.

The play, part of a Monday night series of new works, is based on the work of teenage Japanese American girls in the internment camps who wrote letters to the Nisei soldiers fighting in Europe and the Pacific to keep their spirits up.

One of them was Yuri Kochiyama, now a renowned civil rights activist living in Oakland. She said of her group, called the Crusaders, "The young girls started out with only five names, their own brothers who were in the Army. Before the war ended, the Crusaders were writing to 13,000 Nisei GIs."

For the soldiers, the letters from home were like "bits of paradise."

Tickets are $7 at the door (no reservations). For more information, call (415) 826-5750 or visit www.themarsh.org.