I have always been interested in the history of World War II. For years it had been a goal of mine to have the opportunity to sit down with a WWII Veteran and learn about their firsthand experience, but this was a “maybe someday” that got lost in life’s daily responsibilities.
In 2015 I learned from a friend that his next door neighbor - who he had a close relationship with - had passed away. I knew about his neighbor, as my friend would talk about him from time to time, but it wasn’t until he passed that I found out he was a WWII veteran. All that time I had easy access through my friend to talk to this man, but now it was too late.
From that moment I decided I was not going to allow such opportunities to pass me by. I began reaching out to VFW’s, American Legions, and Facebook, asking if anyone knew of any WWII veterans in my area that would be willing to talk with me.
It took a few months - and many people telling me that I was too late - until I finally, slowly started to locate veterans of the Second World War. I would meet with them at a restaurant or at their homes, ask questions, write down their answers, take some pictures, and post it to Instagram. The more I did this, and the more people began to see the value in what I was doing, I began receiving more and more leads on living WWII veterans I could talk to.
I developed a separate Instagram account called Memoirs Of WWII to shares the veterans’ pictures and stories, and it quickly surpassed my personal account in followers. After a year of running this account, I was approached by a friend who ran his own videography and editing business, suggesting that he come along with me the next time I did an interview so we could film it and just see what we could do with it.
Over the next several months we were filming interviews and editing them into short-form documentaries, complete with compelling, accurate visuals, and narration to bring context and fill in the gaps. In May of 2018 we launched the Memoirs Of WWII short film series, releasing one video per month, and have been continuing that mission ever since. To date, we have released 29 short films, totaling over 15 million views, and our series YouTube channel has over 240,000 subscribers.
As our series has gained notoriety, we now have people contacting us on a daily basis from all over the country - and even other parts of the world - asking us to come interview their grandfather, uncle, neighbor, etc. When I first started this project, I could barely find a single WWII veteran I could meet with. Now, we have hundreds of WWII veterans from hundreds of different locations on file, waiting for us to come to them so they can tell their story.
But as each of my team members - including myself - work full time jobs to support their families, we have only been able to do short trips every once in a while to gather just a few stories at a time. Meanwhile, the remaining WWII veterans across the world are dying off at a rate of 300 per day.
The time we have left to document the stories of the last living veterans of the Second World War in the meaningful and impacting way that we do is quickly running out. The grants we are seeking will enable us to reach more veterans in a shorter length of time than we ever have before. That many more men and women - who selflessly served during our history’s darkest time - will be able to share their story in a way that will continue long after they are gone.
Joshua Scott
Memoirs of WWII
www.memoirsofwwii.com
