Documenting the Brave: WWII Heroes with Photographer Zach Coco

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Hi, I'm Cynthia Marks, and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Dr. Bernard Bail. Welcome to And now, love. Zach Coco is with us today. He is a professional photographer by trade. In fact, he's even taken photos in this studio. We didn't know that until today. Zach recently completed a book titled World War Two Heroes. It is a precious compilation of the stories of many World War Two veterans. Some time ago, Zach realized that the information these vets have, their stories and their insights should not disappear with their passings.

Zach and I know each other because he came to our home and interviewed Bernard Bernard's World War Two. Experience changed the course of his life, and I am pleased that Zach was able to learn of it and put it in writing for us. Thank you for being here, Zach. This is great. Yeah, Thank you for having me. Of course. It's a pleasure. And what you've done is terrific. And the first thing I want to ask is how did you come to decide that you ought to do this? Well, my grandfather was a World War Two veteran, and he served in the Navy. And he was my hero growing up.

I always looked up to him. He instilled a lot of a lot of moral values that I have today. And I always wanted to sit down and interview him and kind of learn about his service history. I knew little tidbits here and there that my dad had kind of told me, but I moved away from from home when I was 18 and I'd make it home maybe once a year, you know, after that. And the time never seemed right, or I just always felt like I had the opportunity and it would always be there. But more time in the future. Always. Always, always push it down the road.

But yeah, yeah. He got, he got sick and he, he, he died. And that kind of lit lit the bulb in my head. And I realized this whole generation was kind of leaving us rather quickly. And that's, that's what started my mission. His death was the catalyst for it. And the next year, I started seeking out World War Two veterans. How did you go about that? Well, it's it's kind of difficult because they you know, they're not out and about. They're under the radar. Very under the radar and not a lot on social media. So there's this wonderful program, national nonprofit called the Honor Flight.

Basically, what the program does is it flies veterans to D.C. for free so they can see the memorials that were built for them. It started serving World War Two veterans because the World War two Memorial wasn't completed until 2005, I believe, and it was completed after the Vietnam Memorial, after the Korean Memorial. So they they were kind of built backwards. So these guys were already in their eighties, and the opportunity for them to see the memorial was was probably impossible for a lot of a lot of those guys. So it's created around that time my dad took my grandfather on on a trip on an honor flight.

And I flew out there and I surprised them. So I documented that trip. I have photos of it and I didn't fully grasp what it meant until after he passed away. And I was looking at the photos again and then it really struck me like how impactful this was, you know, on him and the other veterans and then also on me. So when I started my my mission, my project, I looked at the honor flight as a as a resource. And it just so happened at the time that I was starting my project, a hub in Los Angeles was starting up. So one didn't exist until until this very same year.

So I had reached out to the director and they were just getting started up as well and didn't have the funds or the resources to bring additional or unnecessary people aboard. So I offered to pay my own way. So I flew out to D.C., followed this group around, documented their their group's trip, and then donated the photos to the families, the veterans and the organization. And that was kind of the beginning of my relationship with them. I've done 17 trips with this with that particular hub. Wow. And they've flown, I think, over a thousand veterans back to D.C.

So I really heavily leaned on the Honor Flight Network for reaching out and as a resource to find World War Two veterans. And then once you get into the community, it just kind of snowballs. And so and so no somebody else. And you get referred to other amazing individuals. So is that the only trip the honor flight takes is to D.C.? I know you mentioned that you'd been to Normandy. Is that a different organization? Yeah, it's a different organization. Honor flight. I was created, and that's their main mission to get veterans to D.C. There's there's other organizations that that do various different trips around the world.

Some go to the World War Two Museum in New Orleans, forever young veterans. That's another group that I volunteer with. And they take veterans back to where they served. So that was that was the Normandy trip. I've also been to Germany and Belgium with them with with a group of World War Two veterans and Pearl Harbor for the 80th anniversary there. So all amazing experiences and especially to be there with with the veterans who served and lived during that. I can't even imagine for you going to all those different places with all these men who had pretty potent experiences.

Did you pick up on any of their feelings or did you come away feeling different about those people that served or different about those places or different about humanity than you had before? I guess a short question would be, was there something eye opening about those experiences for you? Well, my first time to Normandy and my first time to Pearl Harbor, we were I was there for the anniversary. So the ceremonies that took place took place on on the day, naturally, on our way to each ceremony. And while we were there, I kind of did some self-reflection and imagined at this time on this day, 75 years ago, 80 years ago, this was this was happening in this place.

So it's it's a little tough to comprehend the chaos and the brutality that was taking place in such a peaceful and serene space today. But just trying to to imagine like, you know, at this time, you know, thousands of troops are invading the shoreline. And I'm just trying to imagine the chaos and putting myself in the shoes of the soldiers that were there, which I can never, never do. But just to have a little bit of perspective and a few of the veterans that I returned with, especially one gentleman jack up in who is who is in the book, he he served as a medic on Omaha Beach on D-Day, and he had never been back for until 75 years.

He he returned and he struggled with PTSD his whole life. He openly talks about his battle with alcoholism and the struggles that he had overcome. And he ended up writing a book himself, expressing his experiences and how he overcame. But returning to Omaha Beach with him, he was very emotional for him. My job was to document the trip and to capture images. So there's also kind of a delicate balance to wanting to give him his time and his space, but to also capture these these moments that that are impactful. So so there's no forced sharing of information, of course, because these could be for lots of people, very private moments where they're experiencing something that they don't even want to share.

And something I wouldn't even be able to comprehend what what they're going through. So, yeah. But there is something to that. And and it is, as you say, you can't as a person outside of what was going on, you can't ever really experience what was going on, what sort of terror or fright or those things that must have been happening. But I even remember as a little girl going to a Civil War site, and it was, as you say, this very peaceful, beautiful field with trees. And you could hear the breeze blowing. But yet knowing what had happened there created a huge impact.

And it was valuable for me to feel that. They seemed to choose the most beautiful places to fight. What's that about? So of course, you met with over a hundred veterans and you've put together this book. You're still putting together more interviews. Is that right? Since COVID hit, I kind of stopped with the interviews and redirected my focus towards documenting these various trips with different organizations. I see. And because you are this fabulous photo, the photographer, it's not just the stories of these great individuals, but you took some beautiful photos.

Yeah, that's. That's my grandfather. So he. my gosh. He's the reason for it all. So this gentleman was born in Philadelphia. He was born in Philadelphia. He was in the Army Air Corps, and he was stationed in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor was was even attacked. So we had troops over there in the Philippines, I believe, about four months after Pearl Harbor was attacked. Essentially our supply lines were cut off because of that. The Navy fleet was decimated. So our troops over there weren't able to be resupplied with rations and ammunition, and they were basically on half rations and had to continue, you know, rationing it out.

So they didn't run out. I believe it was in April of 42. The Japanese had forced our troops back to the bitter end peninsula and essentially said, surrender or we'll annihilate everybody. General MacArthur, I believe he reluctantly surrendered. Thousands of our troops were captured by the Japanese and forced on this death march. And it's that it's been coined, I believe it was it was different for for each individual. But up to seven, seven days of just marching with no food, no water, extreme heat, the slightest infraction, they would be tortured, killed, beheaded.

You know, some describe seeing troops run over by tanks and the Filipino citizens would try to throw food at these guys to help them survive. And if even if they went to the roadside to get some water out of a puddle that probably had was disease anyways, they they'd be killed. So he survived that. Unbelievable. And a prisoner of war camp for the duration of the war survived the hell ships he was working 12 hours a day in a coal mine being fed nothing more than a small bowl of rice. At one point he ended up in the zero ward, which was essentially where they went to die.

And he told me he saw this bottle of liquid on the ground. He had no idea what it was, but he thought it would end his life. And in turn, it ended up cleaning him out and healing him back to health and that's kind of what got him through the rest of the war. But amazing. His story is very, very interesting because after the war, he returned home, he regained health and he started a jewelry business and eventually moved out to Beverly Hills, opened up a shop there and became a jeweler. And Elvis was one of his his big go to customers. And he designed numerous pieces for him, the iconic TCB with the lightning bolt that was Solomon's design.

So. And TCB means. Taking care of business. Yeah. Yeah. But he Solomon forgave his captors and the torture and beatings that he endured. And did he talk about what it took to forgive those captors? From my recollection, it didn't take a lot for him, I think. And I don't want to I don't want to misquote him either. But I think he he kind of understood that partly they were doing what they were told. They were doing their job, so to speak. But I feel like a lot of that hate and animosity that he had just kind of left once, once he returned home and was able to find peace, he was a very, very loving man.

I mean, he he felt like a grandfather to me after after my grandfather had passed. And so you became kind of close in a way. Yeah. We'd go down and I'd have lunch with him and I visited with him multiple times. And. Well, I wonder if part of that forgiving has to do with giving some amount of thought to a just in a way, being the luck of the draw could be turned around where, you know, you're holding people captive and you're putting other people in a horrific situation as a soldier and you're just doing what you've been assigned to do, which has to create all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings in one's body and head and heart.

I imagine there's a strong internal conflict that, yeah, that people faced. So many times you hear that veterans don't even want to talk about their experience, I assume, and maybe it's not correct that it's just because it's too painful, just both in terms of the visual that you might have to create in your head and in terms of wrestling with your own feelings about what you did or didn't do. Did anyone speak about that? Probably not. If they chose not to speak, they're not going to speak about that. Well, yeah, it's interesting. And because that is it, that is like a common phrase, you know, they don't really like to talk about it.

And I totally understand that. And I can't speak from personal experience, but I imagine that that if you've been through something traumatic, you're not just going to openly tell people. But if you were to sit down like we are now and kind of have a conversation and you're asking questions that that may allow them to open up and speak about those things, I think there's opportunity there rather than then then just kind of waiting for somebody to share that information with you. So I suppose to there'd be some concern about what how what you're saying is affecting the person that's hearing it.

I agree with that. And and I think a lot of the times the veterans are trying to protect their family from from hearing that, because you do hear from family or I have heard from family a lot that, they never talked about this. You know, I learned a lot from the interview that you did with them. But of all the the veterans that I approached, I think only one said they didn't want to speak about it. Another one denied me an interview because he didn't feel worthy, that he belonged among the others because he didn't feel like his contribution was significant enough.

But after, you know, after sitting down and face to face, I spoke to over 100 World War Two vets and they all shared to varying degrees. Some weren't as open. Some would speak for 5 hours without me having to ask a question. Amazing. And some of their memories were just like like it had happened yesterday. So. And were they sharing like the day to day stories or those stories that were more monumental or were they sharing some amount of feeling about the experiences? What they would share mostly would be, yeah, the actual events that took place.

And I would try to ask like, how are you? Like, how did that make you feel? And I don't think there was a lot of depth to the response. A lot of the times, Yeah. I mean, I also feel like a lot of times it was kind of a silly question. It's like, what did it feel like to be getting shot at? And so I think it's pretty obvious what that feeling was. Fear and looking back, these people looking back at their experiences, what would it well up in them or what did they think about how was life different for them? Had they not experienced that? I mean, they wouldn't know because they did experience that.

But as I mentioned to you before, I I'm so curious to know if that kind of all in horrific thing makes you think about your life differently. Like here, I thought I was going to do this simple thing and now I see how fragile we are as humanity. Now what do I what do I do with this information I have? Yeah, I mean, a few of the gentlemen that I spoke with, they they entered service as a means to help their family. I mean, remember, our country was in the midst of the Great Depression at the time. And so a lot of these these guys grew up with nothing and their families had nothing.

And they were getting paid 50 bucks a month, 50 bucks a week. Some like not a lot of money. And that was enough to help send money home to their family. Yeah. So there was a duty and there was. A duty in that. And one of the one of the gentlemen I spoke with, he was a paratrooper, jumped into Normandy on D-Day. And he was 16 when when he enlisted, he took his brother's birth certificate and lied about his age because he was too young at the time. But I think paratroopers were offered an additional $50 a month as hazard pay. So that was that was the incentive for him.

They didn't they weren't really I can't speak for everybody. But in his circle, he wasn't looking at the dangers. He wasn't looking at the repercussions of his decisions. I mean, as a 16 year old. One of the joys of being 16. Yeah. You don't you don't really have have that perspective. And he was looking to better his the life of his family. So so I know for my favorite veteran Bernard his experience in the war was such that he did create a different path for himself. But first he decided he would be a doctor, and then he said, Wait a minute, I can't just be a doctor.

I have to be a doctor of the heart and the mind. And maybe that way I can get to individuals who can. Then get to other individuals, and we can create a place where we think about peace first. I think through work such as yours, where we bring to the forefront these people that served and we support them and we hear their messages and really take it to heart. I'm grateful to you for bringing this to us, and obviously we're all grateful to these people who served. Now, I just I just want to share the information. That's that's my that's my mission.

That's my goal is to make sure that, you know, their duty and sacrifice is not forgotten. And it gave me a lot of perspective and appreciation for the life that I live. And, you know, if I'm having a bad day, it's it's to. Put it into a different sort of perspective. So you mentioned that some of these people would speak to you for hours at a time and others just a few minutes. Was there any common thread, anything that they all mentioned or a group of them mentioned about their experience? Probably the most common thread was there was like, there's a clear enemy there.

They knew. They knew what they were fighting for. They knew. I don't think there was much conflict in most of them as to what the mission was. That's interesting. I think a lot of us wonder about that. Do these people know what they're getting into? Yeah, I think I think compared to other conflicts, you know, Vietnam is also like another polarizing war. You know, there's a lot of controversy surrounding that one. And it's just the reception when the war is it ended, you know, in World War Two and there was a giant celebration and they were welcomed.

You know, they were welcomed home and Vietnam vets weren't. And they were treated very poorly. And you see that same feeling and emotion in D.C. at the at the memorials like the World War two memorials is a very celebratory space. And the Vietnam Memorial is very overwhelming. And it is somber, very dark. So I don't know if that's intentional or if it's just a result of of what they were. But yeah, I think there was a very clear, clear enemy and clear mission at hand when a lot of them when asked, would you do it again, they all say in a heartbeat.

My father is a Vietnam vet and all that you're sharing. I can remember those experiences, him coming home to sort of very lackluster reception and he too would not talk about his experience. And there was not a little window for me to open to begin to know what that was like for him. Just totally shut down. Anyway, he's he's passed on and I'm not able to get that information from him. So in this book, too, there are some women. There are some amazing women in there. That is quite something back in World War two. So what sort of positions did a couple of those women have?

One of them was an army nurse, and she was stationed just outside the Battle of the Bulge, which was like the deadliest battle, I think, in in history, definitely of World War Two. Another one was a typist. And I believe she stayed stateside. And then another one, Yvonne Carson. She she actually grew up in Belgium and her family had to flee. She's Jewish descent and her family had to flee Belgium when she was, I believe, 11 or 12. And they were on foot and treacherous escape. I believe they made their way to Spain. And she had a brother who who didn't stick with them and was kind of tricked by somebody saying that they could help him get out.

So I believe her her parents and her sister ended up making it off the continent. I believe they went to Jamaica first. They traveled a bunch of different places. But And were they looking for a place where they would be well-received or a place where they felt like they could earn a living? From what I understood just yeah, where they would be safe getting out of Europe entirely. It was mission number one. Yes. The duration of the war. She ended up working like decoding and encoding messages. But fast forward to the end of the war. They returned back to Europe and found out that her brother had been held in a concentration camp was eventually killed and she had 50 of her family members had all been lost in the extermination camps, so almost their entire family was was just annihilated.

And yeah, just unbelievable. So did she speak about what that felt like for her to have not been one of those 50 people? I mean, that's something to contend with. Why? Why me? Why am I still here now? Like survivor's guilt? To a degree, yeah, not to my recollection. She has a book as well, which is kind of great that a lot of a lot of these veterans didn't put their testimony into into a book. And, you know, her her pages in here only touches on a small part of it. But but yeah, that was probably one of my third or fourth interview that I had done.

And it must've just really made you want to keep going. Yeah, it's it's tough to comprehend. It really is. This book is available on your website. It is? Yes. The website is Pictures for Heroes. Dot org Pictures for Heroes, dot org. And the book is World War Two Heroes, right? Yeah. And all the imagery and biographies are on the website as well. So you can preview pretty much all the book on there. And even so, then if we say we're interested in that, the woman from Belgium, I think it was and you saw it in Google her name, you might even find her book.

Definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe that's available on Amazon and should be easy to find. I see. But yours is easiest to find on your web site. It is. Well, thank you for sharing that. And just to kind of go back to Dr. Bail for a moment, I'm so pleased that he was able to share his experience with you and share his experience in the film that was sort of documenting his life and with the goal of promoting his theories. So again, he came out of this World War Two experience as a Jew, having survived all of the sort of treacherous events that he went through and was able to share his story with you, with us.

And I am so grateful that he was able to do that. So again, thanks for promoting this for us and for sharing all of these stories and keep it going. Now, of course, I mean, it's an honor to have met Dr. Bail and all the other veterans that I have. And yeah, like I say, my mission is just to get the information out there, make sure that people can read about it and appreciate what people have done to ensure that we have a safe and free country that we live in. Yes. Yeah. So thank you and thank you all for listening to this special podcast with Zack.

Please come back again soon and we'll have something new and different to share before now.