101-year-old WWII vet shares his wartime stories through TikTok videos

When Jake Larson was 15 years old in 1938, he lied about his age to join the National Guard in his hometown in Minnesota.

Over the next seven years, he was sent overseas to fight in World War II, stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day and survived enough close calls to deem himself “the luckiest man alive.”

Now, at 101, he might seem like an unlikely candidate for social media stardom – in fact, he asked his granddaughter McKaela Larson, 31, “What the hell is TikTok?” when she first mentioned it to him.

“He thought it was like a clock,” McKaela said.
But with her help, Larson – better known as “Papa Jake” – has indeed become a social media sensation, sharing his life stories with more than 800,000 followers on TikTok, connecting with younger generations and bringing his audience along on his returns to Normandy and Northern Ireland, where he was stationed during the war.