On 11 September 2001, I was woken up by an earthquake.
At around 7:10 am local time, the clothes hangers and lamp of my hotel room at the International Garden Hotel in Narita, Tokyo, started shaking violently. That was my first earthquake ever.
Fifteen hours later, I was again to be awoken with a start by mother’s alarming phone call. I thought she wanted to inquire about that earthquake. On her urging, I switched on CNN, where I watched Paula Zahn, who had her first day at CNN, reporting live from New York, in shock and awe.
It was my first night of a four night layover in Tokyo Narita. Gratefully, no bigger damage was reported that day from this particular local earthquake with a magnitude of around 4.1 on the Richter scale in the Chiba region, where Narita Airport ist located.
When I think of that day, I still can hear the banging of the clothes hangers against the wardrobe walls. I was lying on my back and opened my eyes and the first thing I apprehended was the hanging lamp in the middle of the room, which was swaying from left to right. I can see it in slow motion nowadays. Every step of that day, I see in slow motion.
Outside, the sun was shining in a welcoming invite to get up, which would later diminish into a dense pre-autumnal fog for the rest of the day. It was a warm and humid and gloomy day. Alas, that atmosphere was pure twilight. The whole day was twilight. Like the harbinger of bad news.
I remember this all as if it were yesterday. I remember every step, every smell and every sensation that day.
I was proud of „surviving“ my first earthquake. Later in the morning, I rented one of the free bikes in front of the hotel and cycled to the Aeon Mall for lunch and some food and souvenir shopping. I had tempura at one of the food stands of the mall and bought some snacks for the hotel.
I cycled back from the mall with a detour along Naritasan, a lovely, beautiful, gorgeous Shingon Buddhist Temple, the landmark of Narita. Narita otherwise is known as the town surrounding the international airport of Tokyo, not the original Haneda Airport near the city, but the newer one, some 70km away from Tokyo and operating for 40 years already.
The next day, on Wednesday, September 12, I was supposed to meet my friend Miyako for lunch in Ginza, Tokyo.
Around 5pm, I was back at the hotel. I was absolutely done for the day, jet lagged and tired. And I was looking forward to Miyako. I had brought a present for her. Besides, I loved umbrella shopping at Matsuya and Mitsukoshi department stores in Ginza. I have an affinity for elegant umbrellas, much like the stylish Japanese do. Around 6pm, I went to bed and fell asleep immediately. Jet lag in Japan is tough.
Under attack
It was shortly before 10pm that I was woken up by my mother with a phone call from Switzerland. Back then I didn’t have a cell phone yet and my family would have a list with the hotels my airline would send us to on our layovers.
My mother sounded very alarmed and was shouting something about attacks, but I was still not fully awake while she poured out her worries and fears. I couldn’t discern what she was talking about. My first coherent thoughts were that she must have heard on the radio of the 4.1 earthquake in the Narita and Chiba area earlier that day and thus wanted to check on me.
I tried to placate her that no real damage was reported from that earthquake and that I actually found it impressive.
Only then did I start listening to her, more awake with every word she shouted. There had been attacks with planes on the World Trade Center in New York and she didn’t want me to go downtown the next day to meet Miyako because maybe other big cities might be under attack as well.
Having always been interested in world history, politics and current cultural topics, I had already known about the Taliban prior to 9/11.
Incredulously and worryingly I had been following the threat and destruction by the Taliban in the months leading up to 9/11 – especially how they had destroyed those magnificent giant buddhist statues of Bamiyan some months earlier.
As I was an aspiring writer back then, in June 2001 I had participated in a writing competition for The Economist. The topic was something about the imminent political threats in the world around the Millennium. I had submitted my essay about how I feared that the Taliban (I didn’t know about Qaida or IS back then) could target Western nuclear power plants with planes. Those were my fears before 9/11 happened. I am a big science fiction fan. I love Star Trek, Star Wars, Isaac Asimov, H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick…. ever since I was a child, I would have recurring nightmares of aliens attacking earth and my loved ones. Now these aliens had become reality.
Obviously, my essay was not accepted and some American economics professor won the essay contest in July or August 2001.
The end of the world as I knew it
When I switched on CNN after my mother had hung up, I watched Paula Zahn. Paula Zahn would be my 9/11 companion throughout the following weeks and months.
Then suddenly I felt the urge to go in search of my crew mates. Who were without a doubt in bed or had heard of these news and were stumbling around the lobby. I went down to the reception area, where different airliners (Narita hotels are full with sojourning airline crews from all over the world) were awkwardly hanging around, alert with these news, desperate for information and longing for interaction with each other. Some of them were hugging each other. I was also worrying about my fellow colleagues on layover in New York right then. Who of my friends was in New York? My mind was racing. Only days later would we be informed by our airline, that all crew members were accounted for.
I found myself embracing some Garuda Indonesia crew members who were crying, I started crying, too. I couldn’t make out any of my crew in the lobby. So I joined different crew members from Asian and American airlines and we would watch CNN in the seating area in the lobby. Nobody was saying anything more beyond Oh My God. There were no words.
The solidarity and empathy among us airliners was overwhelming, also in the time after. Even though I am not American, I felt as attacked as any American must have felt that day. Airplanes had been used as weapons of mass destruction. This was as well an attack on my lifestyle and profession.
I spent a few hours with my peers in the lobby area in front of the tv screens. The comfort we gave each other was precious. When I returned to my room, it was past 2am. I called my mother again. Phone calls were very pricey then. I must have talked with my family for half an hour nonetheless. My parents didn’t want me to risk going into Tokyo for my lunch meeting. And they were right in their fears. Except that I consider Japan – sans the seismic tremors – the safest country in the whole wide world.
I assured them that I would be cautious and that I was sure that Tokyo, Ginza, wouldn’t be attacked.
I hadn’t slept at all. On the train to Ginza the following morning, I was still dazed and shocked. I could make out concerned glances from the fellow Japanese commuters. The Japanese won’t touch you out of compassion or pat your shoulders as an encouragement. That would be a transgression. But they would nod at me and show their respect. I could see them whispering together and looking at me worryingly. They probably thought I was an American. An elderly gentleman sitting opposite of me was reading the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the front page of which depicted the catastrophe of New York.
He showed me the front page with gravitas and gesticulated towards me, as if to ask if I was from there. I said something like: iye, Swissu desu. Which was supposed to mean: no, I’m Swiss. He nodded and whispered in a quiet voice to those surrounding ears where I was from. I apprehended the whole train wagon full of Japanese commuters in silent support of me Western World foreigner, whose world had been attacked.
I met Miyako and we did spend a nice time together in Ginza. But there was the twilight gloom from 9/11 following me around. It still does, at times.
My life was very much impacted by 9/11. I felt overwhelming compassion, anger, anxiety and powerlessness. I had felt similar torment three years earlier when the MD11 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, on which I had flown my first New York flight 10 days earlier.
The cataclysmic events affected us all in the Free World. Shortly afterwards, my unsinkable airline sank. It was destroyed by financial mismanagement and the aftershock of 9/11.
I had already arranged freelance work at my airline, so that I could pursue art history studies at university. In Sociology and Communication class that October 2001, our Swiss professor would talk about 9/11. It dawned on me then that this was the Vietnam War of my Generation. Or any kind of war where previous generations were bereaved of their innocence. Because even at university, 9/11 was the main topic.
10 years ago, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I was flying to Hawaii for a vacation. I had brought Swiss Ragusa chocolates for the United Crew on the flight from San Francisco to Kailua-Kona. As a courtesy, they gave me one of their remembrance bracelets, which I still honor. It says: We remember.
I will always remember.
