Five Years Later: Remembering How I Spent "Nine-Eleven"

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was asleep in Ventura California, a small beach town about an hour north of LA. I had just driven across the country with my father from Boston to enroll in the doctoral program on Japanese History at UCLA. We had gotten into Ventura the night before and were sleeping at my brother's apartment. I had slept on the couch in the living room.

A childhood friend of mine living in Kentucky called me up completely worried. She knew that I had just made the trip from Boston to LA, and she thought I might be on one of those planes that were so tragically used as torpedoes against the World Trade Center. It was from her that I found out about both hits on the two towers. I believe it was only roughly around 6:30 am Pacific Time when she called to wake me up with the news. It sounded like a crazy story, and I couldn't fathom what she was describing. It was some sort of off-kilt conspiracy fantasy: two planes had flown into the WTC, another one had hit the pentagon, another plane down in Pennsylvania, and one of the towers had already come down in a pile of dust!

My father and I turned on the television to watch the living nightmare. I remember that it felt like watching some fake footage from some really bad action movie. It just didn't seem like a reality. The TV stations kept replaying the two scenes - airplanes crashing into buildings and a mammoth tower falling down upon itself - over and over again. Then within - it seemed - only 15 minutes of turning the TV on, the second tower came tumbling down in horrifyingly slow motion. It was truly horrific.

Dad and I decided to go out that day, although a lot of people were worried that more strikes might hit, so it was potentially dangerous. But we felt completely restless, like there was nothing else we could do - and we wanted a reason to pull ourselves away from those awful yet mesmerizing images on TV. We weren't going to be able to do much by just sitting at home. And we wanted to act out against the terrorist sub-plot to have average Americans fear going about their daily lives. So we decided to make a run into LA, check out the UCLA campus, open my bank account, make a stop by the housing office, and have a look at Santa Monica and Brentwood. I remember that the campus was completely empty that day. Soft winds were blowing, dried leaves and bits of discarded trash were rustling by, but no people were there. I imagined everyone was at home anxiously soaking in the details of such unbelievable events.

This was the one time in the last eight years that I have felt any kernel of sympathy toward George W. Bush. I remember thinking that I could never wish such a disaster on even my worst enemy. Unfortunately, as we have seen, Bush has duplicitously turned this nightmare into an interminable hell for hundreds of thousands of other innocents across the world.

Later that evening Dad and I drove back to Ventura on Highway 101 along the Pacific Ocean. It had been a beautiful day, and we hit the stretch passing Malibu right when the sun was setting in magnificent oranges and purples on the horizon. I remember thinking that that beautiful sun was just then setting on the most tragic day in US history.

Pictures above taken from The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune