“My children know me as a gruff guy who never did want to talk about Vietnam too much,” United States Army veteran Barry Moore told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “So I thought if I could get those videos and put them on a disc, then my children and my grandchildren can see what kind of guy I was.”

“If I can find Joe and he still has the movies, what better testament to our deceased friend than to give the movies to his daughters and let them see their dad as he was.”

In 1968, a young Barry Moore was stationed at a base in Rach Kein, South Vietnam, fighting in a war as part of A Battery, 2/4 Artillery, 9th Infantry Division. Alongside him were soldiers he considered “closer than his brothers”, men who existed together in an environment where any minute could have been their last.

One of them was an 18 or 19-year-old from Chula Vista, California, who sported a “Fonzie” hairdo, named Joseph M. Perez. As Moore recalls, he was “always taking movies” of the soldiers — even as cannons blasted — on an 8 mm film camera.

Forty-five years after they returned from Southeast Asia, the former soldier and current resident of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, is still looking for his friend. And the visual memories he may have in his possession.

Movies he’s never seen before.

Moore says he’s turned over every stone in his decades-long quest to find Perez, but to this point, has found nothing.

If you have any information, contact Moore through email: BarMor9th@aol.com.

UPDATE: Thanks to the original story by reporter Debbi Baker of the aforementioned San Diego Union-Tribune, Moore was put in contact with Perez (now residing in Washington) after a family member saw the story posted on Facebook. They spoke on the phone at length and are planning to meet in person in either Perez’s home state or next year in Baltimore. The filmmaker even promised Moore that he would put all his old movies on DVD for him.