Next year will mark the 10th anniversary of the tragic events of September 11, 2001. On the news today, they were asking for viewers’ stories of that awful, awful day. Here’s my story. I was living on the atoll at that time, married and pregnant with my first child. He was due on December 7, which people kept referring to as D-day because that was the day Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese and hence the start of WWII for Americans. I did not particularly like the idea that the only thing people could think about when I told them the due date of my son, was that it was D-day, which happened some 60 years before, and I wonder sometimes if that’s how people whose birthdays or anniversaries lie on September 11 before the World Trade Center bombings feel. I agree it’s something we don’t want to forget, but let’s also celebrate victories and successes that occur on that day instead of only focusing on the tragedies associated with it.
Getting back to my story, I was about 6 months pregnant, and the construction shop was at the time working on the eaves of my house, which were crumbling over the porches on both the first and second floor, so they boarded up all the front windows entirely, and it caused the house to be covered in darkness even in the middle of the day. My husband received a call while we were still in our early morning REM sleep cycles as the events of the day happened several hours before the sun rose here on the atoll. The call was from a co-worker who had already seen the news that morning and told him to turn on the TV. We were, of course, shocked and awed, and weren’t even sure if work on the atoll would continue that day, but nonetheless, it did, to some extent.
After my husband left for work, I was left in the dark of the boarded up “windowless” house, which was depressing in itself, and the only thing I could think about was the fact that we were bringing a child into a world that no longer seemed safe, a world where people could plan, execute, die for, and defend such acts of terror and hatred. What kind of world was that in which to raise a child, I wondered. In the meantime, work on the base continued, but the base itself was completely locked down to all outsiders, including the 1,000 plus Marshallese employees who came from Ebeye each day to run the stores, chow hall, snack bar, and so much more. All of a sudden, Kwajalein was a ghost town with only Ri-belle faces to be found at the registers and performing the blue collar labor normally taken care of by our RMI neighbors.
It was a couple of days before anyone was allowed from off island again, and things gradually returned to normal or as normal as they can be after such as event. To this day, there’s part of me that would like to visit New York, to see the damage for myself. Sometimes living so far away from the rest of the American world makes it all seem so unreal, like a movie instead of real life. The other part of me wants to just continue to move forward and pray for a better future, for a resolution to the hatred, violence, and religious turmoil in the world. This is the part of me that wanted others to simply congratulate me on the upcoming due date of my child instead of telling me that it was D-day. This is the part of me that wants the media to stop focusing so much on the negative and playing off of people’s fears instead of balancing their stories with encouragement for the future and the inspiration that can be found in life every day if you simply take the time to stop and look.
Either way, I can appreciate that we need to honor those who gave their lives, unknowingly or not, in such a horrific event, and I can understand why we need to remember, so we will continue to be diligent to protect our freedoms and our country from threats to our lives and future. And I wanted to write this journal to share my experience from that day because as far removed as I was from the events, it still shook me to the core and made me question life in general and our future in it, but I am so happy to be able to say today that we rose above it all as a country and as families and friends and Americans. No one promises us that life will be easy, and it’s times like September 11 that can either bind us together or tear us apart, and I’m proud to say that the ties that bind are strong, and we did not give up or let it destroy us. If nothing else, let us celebrate that today, we are strong and capable and able to go through one of history’s most senseless acts of violence against innocent citizens and come out better for it in the end. Don’t you think that’s what honors most those whom we’ve lost, the fact that we have learned from this event and grown closer and stronger because of it. I do.
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