I visited New York City last weekend; when I was eating a snack on a patio in Greenwich Village, a firetruck stopped in front of the cafe. The truck had the names of some of their firefighters who were killed on 9-11. More than any memorials or any pageantry I saw on television, the sight of the firetruck brought back all of my memories of 9-11.
On September 11, 2001, I was in South Korea. When the twin towers in New York City were hit by airplanes, I was watching Apocalypse Now on the the big screen in a movie theater in Seoul. A student called me on the phone on the way home from the movie theater and told me what happened.
I thought it was a mistake and couldn’t quite understand what he was saying.
When I got home and turned on the Armed Forces Network, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I was living ten minutes away from one of the largest army bases in Asia; the base was on high alert and there were fighter planes in the air ready to attack any highjacked planes. The noise was so loud that I thought we were under attack.
The days blurred together. I had to teach the next day and couldn’t believe that the Koreans around me didn’t feel the same way that I did; South Korea and the United States have always been (and will always be) allies, but it wasn’t the Koreans who were attacked, it was the Americans. My students had little to say about the attacks and the events of the day, but it was all I felt like talking about for months.
I think I was in shock.
I wasn’t thinking then about what would happen to the United States and had no idea how we would retaliate or what the consequences to American citizens would be. It wasn’t the first time that I felt like an American, but it was the one time that I felt solidarity with all Americans.
I later read an article in the New York Times about residents in the small town of Pendleton, Oregon who feared that they, too, would be the victims of a terrorist attack. I, myself, remained vigilant when I walked around Seoul. When my friends and I saw a car with two middle-eastern men stopped in front of the United States military base in Itaewon, I called the military police.
It was the first and last time that I was guilty of racial profiling.
I couldn’t watch violent movies for months and tried to block out any mental images of victims jumping out the windows. I was thousands of miles away from New York City, and had never even been to New York City, but the events of that day affected me more than almost anything else in my life.