He Skipped Class to Film WWII Vets and Never Stopped

Rishi Sharma grew up in Southern California with no soldiers in the family tree. His parents came to the U.S. from India. Yet as a teenager he made it his mission to sit down on camera with every World War II combat veteran he could find, and more than 3,000 interviews later, he is still at it.

One Name in a Book

It started with reading. In high school, Sharma came across the name Lyle Bouck in a Stephen Ambrose book about the war.

Bouck's tiny unit had held off a much larger German battalion during the Battle of the Bulge. Sharma tracked him down and interviewed him.

After that, he wanted more. He was not looking for celebrities. "There are real superhero World War II vets out there, and I want to meet them," he told CBS News in 2016.

A Bike, a Camera and a Lot of Missed School

Sharma began riding his bike to retirement homes near his high school in Agoura Hills, northwest of Los Angeles. Sometimes he simply showed up and asked to speak to the veterans.

He went after school, and often instead of it. "I ditched so many days of high school to go do an interview," he later told CBS News.

He filmed the men for hours, burned each interview to a DVD and gave it to the veteran, along with the rights to the material, free of charge. Some veterans keep their stories within the family. Others have passed copies on to museums.

Living on the Road

When high school ended, Sharma put off college, borrowed his parents' car and went looking for veterans further afield. In 2016 he founded a nonprofit to preserve the interviews.

The early years were rough. He was too young to rent cars or check into many hotels alone. "I live out of the car when I'm on the road," he told CNN in 2018.

By then he had filmed more than 870 veterans in 45 states and Canada. The count kept climbing.

More Than 3,000 Interviews

In July 2026, CBS News caught up with Sharma, then 28, in Yorktown, New York. For ten years he has crisscrossed the country, and he has now interviewed more than 3,000 World War II combat veterans.

"For the last 10 years, I've been on the mission to interview every single World War II combat veteran," he said.

One recent interview was with Nils Mockler, a 100-year-old Marine who served as a combat intelligence scout. His first battle was Iwo Jima.

Sharma asked him what it meant to see the American flag raised there. "Well, the hair on my arms still stands up when I think about how beautiful it was," Mockler said.

Still Going

The project, now called Remember WWII, runs on donations. The recordings still go to the veterans' families.

He calls the men he meets "the moral compass of our society." He has not stopped looking for the next one.