One of the most powerful images from the weekend was a shot of World War II veterans, many of them wheelchair bound, sitting at their memorial on the National Mall and watching the Fourth of July fireworks.
The WWII vets featured in the President’s speech watched the fireworks from their memorial. ❤️🇺🇸🙏🏻🎆 pic.twitter.com/T2tfCRVcvA
— Dana Perino (@DanaPerino) July 5, 2026
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, there are roughly 45,000 living World War II veterans, and they're all 90 or older. They represent less than one percent of the 16.4 million men who served this nation during that war.
By the end of this year, estimates say about 42,000 of them will remain, and that number drops to 28,000 by the end of 2027. There are 11 Pearl Harbor survivors still alive, and with each passing, we lose another piece of history.
But one young man has spent the last decade of his life interviewing our WWII veterans to preserve that history and their stories.
Over the past 10 years, Rishi Sharma has conducted video interviews with more than 3,000 World War II veterans – members of the "Greatest Generation" who answered the call to defend freedom – to preserve their stories of sacrifice and their lessons of liberty. @SteveHartmanCBS… pic.twitter.com/lUGdBEWT0A
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) July 5, 2026
Sharma started this project in 2016.
🚨#BREAKING: A 28-year-old confirms he has spent the last 10 YEARS of his life interviewing World War II combat veterans to keep their stories alive...
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) July 4, 2026
...in fact, for the last 10 years, he has interviewed World War 2 veterans EVERY SINGLE DAY
He started as a teenager, ditching… pic.twitter.com/rt2D5X1LVR
He was 18 years old at the time.
For 10 years, Rishi Sharma has crisscrossed the country on a mission to preserve history, interviewing more than 3,000 World War II combat veterans, and he's not done yet.
"For the last 10 years, I've been on the mission to interview every single World War II combat veteran," the 28-year-old said. "And I've quite honestly spent every single day of the last 10 years doing that."
Rishi recently interviewed 100-year-old Marine veteran Nils Mockler of Yorktown, New York. Nils was a combat intelligence scout, and his first battle was one of the bloodiest in Marine history — and one of the most inspiring — Iwo Jima.
"What did it mean to you seeing the American Flag being raised?" Rishi asked Nils.
"Well, the hair on my arms still stands up when I think about how beautiful it was," Nils said.
Rishi started his journey 10 years ago by driving around his Southern California neighborhood to record interviews with veterans, but then he expanded his outreach by creating a map of places he hoped to visit in the years to come.
"There are real superhero World War II vets out there, and I want to meet them," Rishi said in 2016.
Sharma developed an interest in WWII history in high school, and said he's going to be on the road 'for years' to get all these stories.
Sharma interviewed Marine veteran Nils Moakler, whose first battle in the war was at Iwo Jima.
"What did it mean to you seeing the American flag being raised?" Sharma asked.
"Well, the hair on my arm still stands up when I think about how beautiful it was," Moakler, who was a combat intelligence scout, replied.
Sharma funds his work through donations, and videos of the veterans are posted online and given to their families. So far, he's done 3,000 of these interviews, but notes that the number of interviews is slowing down.
As CBS pointed out, when Sharma started this project a decade ago, there were about 700,000 WWII veterans still living, and CBS says only about 30,000 remain.
"For so long, they've been the moral compass of our society," Sharma said about the veterans. "Just the advice that they impart silently steers the ship of this country."
The project is called Remember WWII, and features Sharma's stories on its website. You can refer a veteran and donate to help with Sharma's trips.
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