LOS ANGELES: For as long as he can remember, Rishi Sharma’s heroes haven’t been sports stars or movie stars or any other kind of stars. They’ve been the U.S. combat veterans who won World War II.
Alarmed that even the youngest of them are now in their 90s and dying each day by the hundreds, the Southern California teenager has launched a campaign to try to ensure each one’s legacy.
“I’m on a mission to in-depth film interview a World War II combat veteran every single day,” the earnest 19-year-old says after a recent afternoon spent in the living room of William R. Hahn of Los Angeles, where Sharma mined the 93-year-old’s memories for hours.
His Canon 70D camera rolling, his long, jet-black hair tied back in a tight ponytail, the son of Indian immigrants listened intently as Hahn recounted how he received the Silver Star for bravery by charging through a hail of gunfire on Easter Sunday 1945 as Allied forces retook the German town of Hettstandt.
Asked if he considers himself a hero, Hahn chuckled.
“Not really,” said the retired metal-shop teacher who had a bullet come so close to him that it blew the canteen on his belt to smithereens. Other guys, he said, did similar things, and not all came back to talk about it.
Sharma knows time is not on his side. Of the approximately 16 million Americans who served in some capacity during WWII, some 620,000 survive, but they are dying at the rate of nearly 400 a day, according to the National Museum of World War II.
Sharma figures he’s got about 10 years for his project, so he’s putting off college and finding a job.
Sharma has founded a nonprofit called Heroes of the Second World War. He’d like to eventually recruit others to do interviews and get the interviews to museums.
“This one guy I interviewed in Oregon told me he hadn’t been visited by anyone in over five months and that he was just waiting to die,” Sharma recalled. “This is a 94-year-old who saw combat in the South Pacific, and now he has no one.”