 Welcome to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii, where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers, and the economy. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, inviting you to join the conversation. Please call us with your questions or comments at area code 808-374-2014 or tweet us at thinktechhi. Every generation has its where-were-you moments, when everyone alive on that day remembers where they were when some world-shaking event occurred. In the 1960s, the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were where-were-you monuments. Other events of import were the moon landing, the deaths of Elvis Presley and John Lennon, and the space shuttle Challenger explosion. In the 21st century, I think all of us remember where we were on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Hawaii woked to the news that airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. Throughout the days and weeks following that event, what we thought might have been freak accidents were really the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Today, Jay Fidel and I are going to discuss the good old days before the World Trade Center attacks and whether we're safer now than we were before they occurred. Welcome, Jay. Thank you, Cheryl. So where were you on the morning of September 11, 2001? Living in my bed, and I got a call. It was early. From my brother, who lives on the East Coast, he lived in Washington, then. And he said, you better go and turn the television on. That's all he said. He kept repeating that. And so I did. I went into the next room and turned the television on, and there was the first tower hit in the World Trade Center. And it was burning. And I said, holy moly. And you know, we already kind of concluded that this was a terror attack with the one tower. Why? We both had experience with the military. We both had experience with New York, and we knew that commercial planes did not fly over Manhattan ever. Even military planes didn't fly over Manhattan. And so there was something really fishy about this. And a few minutes later, of course, when the second one hit, there was no issue in anybody's mind what had happened. And I said to him, I was holding the phone throughout all of this. And I said to him, you know, first I told him I felt a lot of affection. I feel affection in moments of crisis. That's the way I am. I think a lot of people will like that. But then I said, you know, the world will never be the same. In our lifetime, this is a defining moment. The world will never be the same. And I was thinking of, you know, how when we were raised in the 50s, our mother would say to us, lucky you live the United States. This is the greatest country on earth. You should be happy, the greatest country on earth. Ringing in my ears all that time. And then, you know, you see Vietnam and you begin to wonder if it's the greatest country on earth. And you see some of those defining moments you mentioned in your opening and the assassinations, Hitherinian, and you wonder again. You see odd things happening, which reflected the early polarization which we now see flowering out in this country, you see all kinds of injustices, and you wonder if it's still the greatest country. But when 9-11 happened, it was the first time since the War of 1812, when a foreign power, if you will, a foreign group assaulted us on our own territory. And that was special. And all of a sudden, I felt, no, maybe we were not the greatest country, not in terms of defense. And maybe we were vulnerable beyond what we ever expected as we grew up. We thought we were invulnerable. This was a clear sign we were vulnerable. Yeah. I remember my boyfriend, now my husband, shook me awake early. He had been watching television before he went to work. And he said, you got to get up. Somebody just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. Now, I had seen airplanes fly—they don't fly over Manhattan, but you can see them on approach to Camden Airport or JFK, different places. And I thought to myself, some pilot made a mistake and flew into the building. So I asked him, I said, was anybody hurt? And he said, yeah, it's likely that everybody's dead. And I said, gee, that's really too bad. And then I rolled over and went back to sleep. And then he comes in about 20 minutes later and says, Cheryl, there's been another crash. Another plane flew into the other tall tower. And that got me out of bed. And I said, we're at war. I didn't know who it was or what the reasons were. But I was certain at that point that these were acts of war similar to, say, Pearl Harbor in World War II. And then when we hear—when we heard that there was a crash in Pennsylvania and a subsequent crash at the Pentagon, I went, oh man, this is over. I was scared. I thought it was only a matter of time before paratroopers were landing on Waikiki Beach and coming to get us, too. Now, that's the part people forget, that we didn't know the scope of it. We didn't know that this was it, those four planes. We didn't know that. And at the time, we—I mean, all of us had reason to believe that this was an all-out war on the country. After all, you go from Manhattan, lower Manhattan, Wall Street, you go for the Pentagon. So, serious business, you're trying to do deadly damage to the country, not just kill the people, but do deadly damage to the infrastructure, financial, governmental, military, infrastructure of the country. And so, I mean, that's the part you have to dredge. I have to dredge out of my memory. It was not just limited to that. It was fear of a war, fear of other attacks elsewhere, even here. And for a time, at least for a few days, it was a pretty scary business. If you remember all that aftermath, I mean, they grounded every flight in the country. You couldn't get anywhere. The traffic in some cities was ground to a halt. Business stopped. Everything stopped. There was nothing else to think or do for days and days until it sort of became all clear and things began to return to some degree of normal. But for a time, we were living in an altered state, all of us. That's right. I had friends who were on their way into the United States from various places around the world who were diverted to Canada and who had to stay there until the airports were open again. And thank God for the Canadians, because they literally had people in private homes. They were housing folks. They were putting people up in high school gyms. They were providing food and bedding and whatever was necessary. And they didn't charge anyone. I mean, even the businesses who were in the hospitality industry did not charge the folks that had been stranded because all of the airports in the United States were closed. You know, there was a movie or play, a play, about that very scenario. Some small town in Nova Scotia, an airline or two, were diverted to that town. There's nowhere else they could go. They landed there, and the people took them into their homes, fed them and all this. And years later, they came back to celebrate and to thank. You know, the level of emotional purity that took place in some instances. Around 9-11 was really fantastic. People finding their hearts. I'm going to tell you a short story. So that's 2001, 2004, only three years later. And it seemed like much more than three years later. I went with the High Tech Development Corporation here. The directors went at their own expense to China. And I met a woman, a Chinese lawyer, because we were trying to do guanxi and network and all this. It was adorning at the time. And there was a certain guanxi happening between the U.S. and China. It's been damaged in the Trump administration, but then it was clear. And her name was Valerie Yee. I believe Valerie is of course the English name for a Chinese name. She was a lawyer, and we had breakfast in our hotel there. And she told this story. As they often do, she came to the United States, to NYU in Manhattan, to take a graduate degree in law. A lot of Chinese do that, even now, lawyers. And it's important for their careers. She was one of the early generations to do that. And she checked in at a dormitory affair, which just happened to be next to the Twin Towers. It was owned by NYU, NYU has a lot of property, and it's my school by the way, NYU had a lot of property in the southern part of Manhattan. And in the morning she got up to go take a bus, what not, walk whatever it was, up from lower Manhattan to NYU, which is a couple of miles away, I guess. And it happened. She's standing on the street and seeing the whole world dissolve into violence, smoke and flame, and she doesn't know what to do. She's a ingenue completely, doesn't speak a lot of English, and she's just arrived, she has no idea what's going on. She can't go back to her dormitory because it's right next to the Twin Towers, and it's inaccessible. So she wanders in the smoke. She wanders around lower Manhattan, doesn't know where to go, what to do, there's nobody to help her. The NYU alumni were sent to look for her and others in her class in similar circumstances. And after a day of wandering they found her, and they took her to their homes where she stayed for weeks with the alumni who cared for her. When she told me the story, well, she told us the story, it was very clear how emotional she was about it. And just think about it, I am emotional too. And she said something to the effect that I became an American that day. Yeah. I recall getting Facebook posts and emails from classmates around the world, one of whom was actually a captain in the Italian Air Force, which I didn't even know there was an Italian Air Force until I met Antonio. But he emailed and said, today we are all Americans. And I was deeply touched by that. And I think we did see a level of heroism, purity of heart, you call it, charity that I wish we could have more often. I mean, people were waiting in line to donate blood. Anybody that knew anything about first aid or search and rescue were showing up at the crash sites, et cetera, not just in New York, but at the Pentagon and also in Pennsylvania. And they were coming from all over the country. They immediately got in their cars and trucks and came from far away places so they could help. And you know, how often do we see that kind of thing? Not very, very often. No. It gave us a rally point. You know? I mean, of course, it was a terrible, horrible thing to happen. But it demonstrated the ability of the American community to come together, the American spirit of helping and caring. It was a remarkable event. And I remember even here, a long way, where people don't, they don't see the East Coast perhaps with the same proximity as people living on the mainland. People really came together. At the time, I was on the campaign committee, I was a webmaster for Linda Lingle who was running for office. Oh, wow. That's not to say I'm a died and willed Republican, certainly not now, but at the time I was on her campaign and I wanted, I thought she was a good candidate. So we were in a meeting and it was not that day, but the next day, maybe the 12th or the 13th. And we were supposed to be talking about the campaign, but we didn't talk about the campaign. What else could you talk about? Sure. Everybody was, you know, totally distracted. And she, Linda Lingle, understood that and she made an interesting kind of opening to us. She said, why don't we talk about how you guys feel about what happened? Yes. It was a coming together. It was a group therapy, if you will. And everybody around the table expressed themselves and really it was a memorable moment that she encouraged us to do that and that everybody in the group did that. And I suppose the same kind of thing was happening around the country. Yeah. Yeah. Hold that thought because I'm hearing from the booth that we need to introduce our viewers to some of the other great programming here on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Kerzer Garcia. This is Working Together and we will be back to reminisce about September 11, 2001 in 60 seconds. Sit tight. Hi. I'm Pete McGinnis-Mark. And every Monday at one o'clock, I'm the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Monart. And at that program, we bring to you a whole range of new scientific results from the university ranging from everything from exploring the solar system to looking at the earth from space, going under water, talking about earthquakes and volcanoes, and other things which have a direct relevance not only to Hawaii but also to our economy. So please try and join me one o'clock on a Monday afternoon for Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Monart. And see you then. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tech Hawaii. I appear every other Monday at three, and I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Welcome back to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Kerzer Garcia and J.F.I. Delani are talking about where we were on September 11, 2001. While we were on break, I was telling you at that time I had students from all over the world. I had students not only from the East Coast, from New York, and Pennsylvania, and Virginia, but I also had students from Saudi Arabia. And I thought there were going to be problems, especially as the days went on and we started to hear about who the suspected miscreants were. And I remember some of our Saudi students coming to me one night and saying, is it possible that we can have a few minutes in class? We have something we'd like to say to the rest of the group. And I was like, sure. But use the time judiciously. And so the Saudi students got up in front of the class and they said, we want you to know that we are sorry for everything that's happened and for those that have lost their lives and lost family member members. And we want you to know that what the people who did these things did does not reflect who we are. And it doesn't reflect what we believe to be true as Muslims. And it took guts for them to get up and say that. Well, I had students from Pennsylvania whose family was near where the plane had gone down in Shanksville, very, very close by. And this one woman stood up and said, I want you to know something. My family lives about five miles from where the last plane went down in Pennsylvania. And what I want you to know is, I think you're our friends. And I don't think that you're responsible for this. And the people that are responsible, they died with their victims. And there is no one else to be blamed. And I just, I thought that was so mature of all my students. That wasn't really true. Well, but. I mean, I think this is kind of, what's the word, naive. Because in fact, there was a large organization, and I wanted to tell you my thoughts about that. There was al-Qaeda. There was al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. It had been developing for a long time. It had roots all over Afghanistan. It had training bases. Was training people to do this very thing. The plot was hatched not only by Osama bin Laden, but others. There are many books today where you can read exactly how these guys came together. They were in Afghanistan. They were from all over the Middle East. And they had been building this plot since actually before the first attempt at bombing the World Trade Center. So there was, I mean, there was this amount of criticism after the first attempt on the intelligence agencies, notably the FBI, for failing to stop it. When they had good information, if they respected it, they could have stopped it. But there was some issue about sharing information between various intelligence agencies as CIA and NSA and the FBI. Fact is, though, the country really didn't know what was going on there. They didn't know what al-Qaeda was up to. And we were sitting pretty for an attack like this. Had they been alert, you know? I think we were in some kind of semi-isolationist mood. And maybe that's what we're doing now. And it goes for the proposition, there was a piece on NPR recently about this, is if you want to be isolationist, that doesn't protect you. Being isolationist makes you ignorant of plots that are being hatched against you. And 9-11 could happen again if we make ourselves isolationists and we don't follow the action. You know, in the years after, certainly, as I said to my brother, the world will never be the same. Look what's happened. Look at all the things that have happened. You could, gee whiz, I mean, it's like dominoes and everything falls and has an effect on something else. We're seeing the Middle East decompensate. And as a result of that decompensation, we're seeing, well, the migrants go to Europe. And as a result of that movement of people, Ai Weiwei calls it, what is it, people flow into Europe. And Europe is decompensating. And having a lot of trouble politically and socially, the world has changed. And you could draw it all right back to 9-11. And our reaction to 9-11, I was right when I said that to my brother, the world will never be the same. And still today, you know, the events of today are really a consequence of 9-11 in many ways. And I do think on a personal level, most of us are a little more wary, shall we say. I never used to be nervous on an airplane. I would go and get a prescription from my doctor for those magic pills that put you to sleep. Not anymore. And I make it a point to talk to the people that I'm sitting around to find out who they are. You know, just to see if my inner fishy radar is working correctly. And I worry about stuff like that. I don't, I remember one time my husband and I were at Walmart of all places, and someone had left a backpack on a bench at Walmart. And my husband said, oh look, somebody forgot, and he was going to go pick it up and take it into security. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. You don't touch that. You go get security and tell them that there's a backpack, but you don't touch it. And he goes, why? Somebody might need it. I go, yeah, and there might be a bomb in it, too. So there has been a change, not only on a community-wide level, but I think individuals have become a lot less, perhaps, trusting and a lot more wary and a lot more aware that they need to watch their surroundings and they need to be a little bit skeptical of what they see. Yeah. I mean, there's a reaction, and then counter-reaction, and then counter-reaction. I mean, for one thing, I think 9-11 encouraged terror, because now you saw an example of a really exquisitely successful, profoundly, fatally, lethally successful example of terrorism and all these guys who might be in the same place, right down to ISIS. You know, are encouraged by the fact that, yes, you can do this. You can kill large numbers of people. So it's the truck riding on the east side of Manhattan and all over Europe, really. It's all kinds of examples of this mindless terror that goes on. Even domestic terror is affected by the fact that, yes, you can get away with it. That guy in Las Vegas killed, you know, 58 people and hundreds more he wounded. And I guess, you know, it all, it makes it possible. It's somehow, it's an encouragement somehow. It's a monkey-see-monkey-do kind of thing. He can do it. I can do it. And, oh, and the Boston Marathon, there's a wonderful movie about that, where it goes into great detail, shows you Boston. It shows you how Boston comes together over that. But my point is only is that you get, first of all, you get more terrorists doing more terror, hithering on. Then you get people reacting, becoming cautious and suspicious. And then you get people going too far in that. And they profile. And the police don't know what to do. And then you get people saying, no, that's wrong. You can't profile. You have to be kind and open. And you have to be liberal and progressive. And you can't come down against anybody with a Muslim name. You can't do that. And so it goes back and forth like that. It kind of destabilized. You know, there's a whole thing. You were trying to achieve before. And that's sad. Yeah. There's almost no such thing as benefit of the doubt anymore. When I was a kid, I was taught as a girl that in Hawaii, that it was OK to be afraid if you were approaching an elevator, say. And it was all men getting ready to get on the elevator. And you were the only female. It was perfectly all right to wait until they went. And you could at least get either one other woman or you could ride the elevator by yourself. We were taught to fear men because men historically have preyed upon women. But I can't draw that genderline anymore because it could be anyone with a gun in their purse or an explosive device in their wallet or shoes that could explode. It could be anything. So you don't know who you can trust and you don't know who you should fear. And that makes for a very uncomfortable place to exist. It's interesting. I mean, you have to develop a new mindset, a mindset of, well, maybe I can have an effect on this. Maybe I can see something suspicious. I can turn it in. Maybe I can even prevent an act of terrorism. Or maybe it's a more zen kind of thing as well. If that bomb has my name on it, that's the way it goes. And I think there's probably going to be more violence like that going forward. And it's like you take a page out of the book in Israel. Because in Israel, there's always the possibility of some kind of crazy terrorism. I mean, the worst in my view is when it doesn't happen so much, or at least we don't see it so much in the paper anymore, where these guys would pass you on the street and turn around and stab you in the back in rapid succession of stabs in a way to kill. And it was training. They trained to do that in a certain way. Now, if you live in Israel, that possibility exists all the time. The police do a good job at trying to save people, get them to a hospital, and deal with the terrorists. But the fact is it's there. And so I think people in Israel, they have a certain mindset. I'm not close enough to be able to describe it to you, but they have a mindset to deal with this, whether it's fear or resolution or a plan in your mind. And maybe as we go forward with this greater risk all the time, we also, we all of us, have to have a different mindset. That's true. I agree with you. But for what it's worth, Jay, I would ride an elevator with you. And I with you. Thank you. So that's as good a place as any to end, unfortunately. Half an hour just flies by. In places like London, Northern Ireland, Israel, as you mentioned, and the Middle East, terror attacks happen with alarming frequency. So it's important that each of us practice vigilance and self-safety. If some disaster were to occur, it would take time for help to arrive. So that each of us might be called upon to provide first aid or to assist others in exiting damaged buildings, staying calm and being prepared, knowing our surroundings. And if you see something strange, be sure to tell someone. That's really the best thing we can do to protect ourselves and each other from the kind of violence we see happening. So that's all the time we have today on behalf of all of the citizen journalists here at Think Tech Hawaii. Thanks for joining us. I will be back in two weeks with more Working Together. Till then, take care.