NOTE FROM BLOGGER: In remembrance of
the 15th Anniversary of 9/11, I am reprinting the post I wrote five
years ago. Tragically, terrorism has escalated around the world since that fateful
day.
I remember
in surreal detail that Tuesday morning (fifteen) years ago.
While driving
to my job at a daily newspaper, I listened to the breaking news story on the
radio: Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan had just struck the World
Trade Center.
America was
under attack.
When I
arrived in the Newsroom, the reporters were gathered around the televisions,
and I joined them.
We saw Manhattan
burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through
smoke-filled streets. A third jet hit the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading
for Washington crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
We would
later learn that President Bush was aboard Air Force One heading to Offutt Air
Force Base in Nebraska, home of the Strategic Command, which controls the
United States’ nuclear weapons.
My
assignment that Tuesday was to edit a special supplement, but I abandoned the
project and filed into the conference room with my colleagues.
“What the
(expletive) is going on?” said the executive editor, as he tried to wrap his
head around what was happening. There were a lot of veteran reporters in the
room, and there was dead silence.
But it was
our job to inform the public, and our reflexes kicked in. The editor started to
assign stories. He told me to connect the dots, to tie this rampage with the
first attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier.
We went back
to our cubicles and started making calls.
I found a former
Army Air Corps mechanic, a Purple Heart recipient who was stationed at Hickam
Field near Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the airfield.
He had been on duty all night and was going to bed at the time of the early
morning raid. He told me that he ran to get a rifle in the hangar, and it was
hit three times. He said that 200 men died there, and the planes, barracks and
hangar were heavily damaged. He also saw the Arizona being bombed. More than
2,000 servicemen would lose their lives in the harbor. Yet he pointed out that
Pearl Harbor was a military target and an act of war, but the World Trade
Center victims were civilians.
I also spoke
to a widow, whose husband was an aviation machinist mate first class aboard the
Helena on the “Day of Infamy.” She said that he was just getting out of bed,
putting on his shoes and planning to go to church when a bomb hit amidships.
She told me that he ran up to the deck, and bullets from a Japanese plane flew
over his head and killed two men. She said that what her husband most
remembered about that day was the confusion and disbelief at the surprise
attack.
I wrote the
story and turned it in on deadline.
The
following weekend I returned to the summer house in Fogland. September is a
beautiful time of year, and everything was the same – the Sakonnet still lapped
the shore, children played on the beach and the sounds of laughter were
everywhere. But everything had changed. I no longer felt safe.
(Ten) years
ago, I was on a fellowship for religion journalists at Brandeis University in
Waltham. One of the guest speakers was a journalist whose beat was Homeland
Security. After the lectures, the college hosted a reception, and I had the
opportunity to speak to him.
“Do you
think we are safe from future terrorist attacks?” I asked him.
“Let me put
it this way,” he said. “We have stopped every terrorist attack since 9-11. But the
odds are that we can’t be right 100 percent of the time.”
It is a
sobering thought.
