What started as curiosity after high school has turned into 10 years of daily interviews and a huge archive of World War II veterans’ stories.
In a story from Steve Hartman for CBS News’ “On the Road,” 28-year-old Rishi Sharma said he has now recorded interviews with 3,000 veterans.
“I’ve spent every single day of the last 10 years doing that,” Sharma said, after recently finishing an interview with a 100-year-old survivor of Iwo Jima.
Hartman first interviewed Sharma in 2016, when he was a recent high school graduate driving around Southern California to talk to veterans because he wanted to learn more about the war.
At the time, Sharma was planning a multi-year trip across the country to save as many veterans’ stories as possible before the last of the Greatest Generation were gone.
A decade later, Hartman said Sharma’s hard drives and SD cards have become “something of a national treasure.”
Sharma said it has been a privilege to meet the men he calls the “moral compass” behind society.
“Just the advice they impart silently steers the ship of this country,” Sharma said.
Hartman said that when he first met Sharma, about 700,000 World War II veterans were still alive. Today, that number is 30,000.
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