Through tears, war memories

By Jerry Fink

Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008 | 2 a.m.

COURTESY OF LARRY CAPPETTO

For “Lest They Be Forgotten — Las Vegas,” filmmaker Larry Cappetto interviewed 41 World War II veterans.

COURTESY OF LARRY CAPPETTO

Larry Cappetto

When documentary filmmaker Larry Cappetto came to Las Vegas last year to tape interviews with local veterans of World War II, he knew was running out of time.

Cappetto began a project six years ago to film an oral history of war veterans. And the World War II veterans were quickly passing.

He estimated about 3 million of the 16 million Americans who served in the war were still alive. Today, he says, there are about 2.5 million.

“I read somewhere that they are dying at the rate of something like 1,500 a day,” the 50-year-old resident of Grand Junction, Colo., says during a recent telephone interview.

Cappetto will be in Las Vegas on Monday to attend the premiere of his film that includes interviews with 41 local veterans. Two local veterans have died since their interviews were filmed.

But Cappetto says many of the others will be at the event.

“This could be the largest contingent at one of our showings,” Cappetto says. “We usually only have five or six.”

Since he began the project, Cappetto has interviewed more than 600 veterans and made nine “Lest They Be Forgotten” documentaries, including chapters on Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima. He’s working on No. 10 — about the Battle of the Bulge. He’s also made chapters on the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Each veteran spends about an hour in front of the camera for the oral history. The full interviews are archived for posterity but edited down to fit into a film that lasts 60 to 70 minutes.

He made four trips to Las Vegas to shoot interviews. It is his only documentary in which the interviews were in a specific city — the others were made by interviewing veterans from every part of the country and Canada.

“I chose to do a Las Vegas film because there seems to be a higher concentration of veterans in Nevada than anywhere else in the country, except maybe Alaska,” Cappetto says. “Something like a quarter of a million.”

He says his documentaries are different from others in that there is no narration.

“I just let the veterans tell their stories,” Cappetto says.

Remembering the trauma of war can be traumatic itself.

His first interview was in February 2003 — a veteran of Omaha Beach heard Cappetto was looking for veterans for a documentary and called him.

“He said, ‘I was at Omaha Beach,’ and then he started to cry,” Cappetto says. When he first began interviewing veterans on camera and they burst into tears, Cappetto says, he would stop filming. But he realized that was part of the story and now leaves the camera running no matter what happens.

“When you see an 85-year-old man crying, it’s very touching,” he says. “Hollywood can’t script this. It’s totally unrehearsed. People telling me things that happened in their lives that, many times, they have not told their wives or kids.

“I provide a nonthreatening environment for them to speak from their heart.”

His documentaries have aired on PBS, and he expects the Las Vegas chapter also will be — although no air date has been set.

The series has received the George Washington Medal for promoting understanding and appreciation for America’s heritage and freedom.

Cappetto says he couldn’t have made the Las Vegas documentary without the support of Palms Mortuary, which sponsored and co-produced the film and provided the location for the filming.

The documentaries are available through Cappetto’s Web site, veteranshistory.org. Palm Mortuary will have some copies available for the public. They are available in some schools.