Southern California man preserves WWII veterans’ stories in 2,600 interviews

Rishi Sharma has recorded more than 2,600 interviews with World War II veterans, building a cross-country archive that now reaches all 50 states and several allied nations. The Southern California native runs Remember WWII, the nonprofit he founded in 2016, and he has said he will keep interviewing veterans every day until there are none left to record.

Sharma’s project began 10 years ago with drives through his Southern California neighborhood, where he started knocking on doors and asking veterans to tell their stories. He later widened the effort far beyond his home area, taking his camera to Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and France, along with communities across the United States. Coverage of his work has portrayed him as a young history enthusiast with no military background and as the son of immigrants from India.

The numbers show how quickly the project has grown as the generation that fought the war disappears. A 2022 Veterans of Foreign Wars report said Sharma had filmed more than 1,720 interviews. By 2023, a local television report put the count at more than 2,250 combat veterans. By 2026, accounts of the project said he had surpassed 2,600 interviews.

Sharma has described the work as a race against time because the youngest surviving World War II veterans are now nearing 100 years old. That urgency has shaped his pace and his finances. He has said he takes no salary, relies on donations to cover travel and production, and gives veterans and their families free copies of the finished interviews. One profile said he often slept in his car or in motels while moving from interview to interview.

The project has drawn attention from CBS News, Associated Press-related coverage, Veterans of Foreign Wars and local television stations, along with appearances on programs including BBC Breakfast, CNN, Fox and Friends and the History channel. Its value is not just in volume, but in timing: each interview captures firsthand memory before it is lost to age, and turns the testimony of the last living World War II veterans into a record that can still be heard.