Photo Credit: Scott Laperruque
On the morning of 9-11 I had finished a morning class at New York Aikikai (NYA) and was helping to clean the dojo. I had been uchi deshi, at NYA from 1993-1996 but was now just a practitioner. Another former NYA uchi deshi, Chuck Mensh, called from the Financial District where he was working. It was about 8:30.
“They are saying some fool crashed an airplane into one of the towers. Get down to 6th Ave and see what is going on.”
I told a few other students and without changing, we pulled on shoes and ran to the corner still dressed in our uniforms. The news was so strange and spectacular that we sprinted, afraid that we would miss seeing it. People dressed in suits stared at us as we ran past.
Rounding the corner the towers were burning in the distance. Sixth Avenue was a straight shot looking down toward the towers and there they were burning. The giddy rush that had carried us there suddenly disappeared as we started at the towers. We all fell silent along with the enormous gathering crowd, everyone looking to the south.
A man turned to me and asked, “Did you see it?” “What?” I asked. “A second plane just went in. A second plane just hit one of the towers.”
The traffic on the avenue all started to pull to the side. Everyone got out looking at the towers. The buildings emptied of office workers, hundreds standing staring south. Those towers, such a salient feature of New York, were burning like cigarettes. It was hard to see them at times from the haze of smoke and papers. From time to time flames shot from the side of the buildings in enormous gouts with black, black clouds.
I returned to the dojo, pulled on my clothes, and headed south for the buildings to see if I could help or do something. I had no idea of how I could help, but it was obvious many were dead. The entire city seemed filled with the sound of emergency vehicles racing down. The only vehicles on the streets moving were emergency and police. All cars and trucks were pulled to the side of the streets with their doors open. Their radios were turned up, carrying the latest news of the attack. People gathered in crowds around the vehicles to hear because the sound of sirens was so loud through the city.
I walked down and down, almost hypnotized by the sight of those burning towers. At the edge of Chinatown, a huge black woman suddenly ran past me. She was well over 250 lb. and yet ran past in a bolt. Her arms and legs all seemed to be going in different directions. She was yelling, “Oh Jesus, Oh Lord, Oh Christ on this earth…” At the same time, I heard a strange sound. It was a rumble that was not so much in my ears as in my bones, a strange cracking and shaking. It sounded like someone was cracking a tray of ice cubes next to my ears. A great cracking. I could not see the towers for the buildings that obscured my sight. I looked past the running woman and ahead in the street, people seemed gripped by some madness. A woman stood on the corner with double fists pressed to her head screaming. A man was running looking over his shoulder. He hit a light post hard and continued on oblivious. Many just stood frozen in place, staring or weeping.
I rounded the corner. One of the towers seemed nothing but an immense pillar of smoke and dust beside the other still burning. I stared in confusion, unsure of what I was seeing. Then I saw the most terrible sight that I have seen. Like a tent coming down, the cloud fell and there beside the other tower stood blue sky. I felt slightly dizzy. I looked to the nearest building, held it in my vision for a moment, then looked back to the incomprehensible blue there where the other building should be. It was gone. I stared at that blue for some time, the sky of a new reality that was beyond my understanding.
Emergency and fire vehicles raced south as fast as civilian vehicles raced out. A fire truck went by with half-dressed firefighters clinging to it. One was still trying to pull his jacket on while holding on with the other as the truck turned the corner so fast the vehicle leaned heavy for a moment and then shot away. I continued to walk down almost as if hypnotized by the last burning tower. Even with the smoke still hanging in the air from the first tower having gone down, it strangely never occurred to me that the second could fall.
Pieces of the building continued to fall out with the explosions that came from the Tower. Immense clouds of paper wafted down burning through the haze. Falling through that haze were people. Many jumped alone, but mostly they jumped in groups. I saw a number of couples come down holding hands. A man and a woman, him in a dark suit, her in a dress fell together. She held her dress down against the wind as she fell.
Suddenly there was the cracking sound again. A shudder went through the tower. The shining structure suddenly seemed turned to a vast hill of dust that rushed down. A solid wall rushed at us stories high and gray. It was if we were in the barrel of a gun as the buildings channeled the blast seemingly straight for us. It rushed forward covering everything in its path. I and everyone around me braced for the impact of the wall that ran at us. I grabbed the chain link fence to my back and held on for dear life. A woman screamed and a man pulled her into his arms, yanking her around so he put his back to the rushing blast coming at us. “Hold on!” he shouted to her and us. About two blocks from us the white wall seemed to rise up slightly … and then roll back into itself. The wall collapsed into a layer of white, grey powder that covered everything just ahead of us. It took me some time to be able to get my hands from the chain link fence I had been clinging to.
Suddenly an man with FBI printed on his jacket began to shout at people, telling us to leave the area, herding everyone away from the area. Other police joined in telling us to head up town. I joined the vast crowds. Mixing in with us were people who were covered with the dust, some of them bleeding. In SoHo walking through the crowd was a black man dressed elegantly in a full suit carrying an brief case. Oblivious to our stares he walked on. He was leper white from the dust and missing one shoe. He seemed not to care.
At Saint Vincent’s Hospital, I volunteered for a few hours to donate blood. Hundreds of us stood in lines to do so. They had blocked off the avenue and had taken equipment from the hospital into the street for a makeshift triage. Rows of chairs from offices covered with white sheets were placed on the sidewalks for what we all expected would be a flood of injuries. We waited in our lines, but no one arrived. Finally, one ambulance pulled up. It was a single firefighter hooked to a respirator. We waited as the line grew to thousands, but no one else came.
Not knowing what else to do, I returned to New York Aikikai. Chuck, who called from the Financial District, came in sometime later. He had walked up from the district. His was one of the buildings that had not been hit there. He wept as he talked about the sights he had seen as they evacuated.
That night, I walked around the area with him. There was such a strange feeling in the city. The few people walking around passed by each other, looking at each other with an intensity I had never seen from New Yorkers. There was a shared connection that was so alien to New York, famous for each person being a stranger to the next. The air was heavy with dust and a strange smell of burning, almost chemical, kind of sweet, strange smell. A few days later, Yamada Sensei returned to the school from teaching overseas. I was in his office when he wrinkled his nose. “I know this smell. It is the smell of death. The smell from burning bodies.” As someone who had survived the Japan WWII bombings as a child, he would have known.
I got a six-pack from the corner store. Chuck and I went to the corner of 18th and 7th Ave, just down from the Aikikai. The streets were empty of cars and people, except for a few police officers milling a half block up from us. It seemed like he and I were the last people in the city. It was so strange to see the city almost deserted. The sun started to go down, and I sat on the curb and opened a beer. He opened one also, and we sat there, legs in the street, drinking. One of the police officers about 20 feet away eyed us for a minute and then seemed to shrug. Normally, what we were doing would have gotten us a fine and a big hassle. These were not normal times.
The sky was black from the burning in the distance. I looked on the sidewalk beside me and paused at a sight. Cockroaches were sitting in the open, having crawled out of the grates around. The only time I saw a bug in the open in NY, they were dodging fast for the next hiding place. Strangely, the cockroaches just sat in the open on the sidewalk. One was close, and I nudged it with my shoe. The bug moved a bit and then just sat. The others around on the sidewalk just sat unmoving. A few moved, but they seemed almost drugged, moving sluggishly and then stopping. Strange. Even the roaches seemed traumatized.
The next morning, they were saying on the radio that firefighters needed socks, underwear, and clean T-shirts. I went with a few of the guys from the dojo to the Bed Bath and Beyond around the corner. I talked to the manager, and she said, “Take all you want.” We loaded several carts full and took them to a collection site on the west side of Manhattan. They were collecting at the Chelsea Piers. It seemed the entire city was coming with clothes and gifts. Everyone was looking for a way to help. It didn’t matter who you were. On leaving, I saw a man with a cap pulled down offloading bags of things for the collection from an SUV. It was the movie star Kevin Bacon. I was surprised at how tall and slim he seemed. Everyone was coming to donate.
“Let's do this.”
I headed uptown after hearing a rumor that they were collecting blood at one of the hospitals there. Along the way, I came across a New York National Guard Armory building. Security was tight with armed soldiers. On a whim, I presented myself at the security point. I mentioned that I was a former Army Ranger with the 1st Ranger Battalion and had served with the 11th Special Forces, expressing my willingness to volunteer if needed. I handed over my driver's license and shared my story with the MP at the front gate. Much to my surprise, I was allowed entry. I was then escorted to an officer who informed me that the National Guard was transporting supplies to Ground Zero with the assistance of civilian volunteers. The National Guard was stretched thin and could benefit from additional help.
A few minutes later, I found myself in the back of a military deuce and a half (2 and a half ton) truck with a group of civilians organized by the NY Guard. They named our group the New York City Provisional Joint Task Force (NYCPJTF). The group reflected the disorganization of the moment but also, looking back, the national spirit in a way. The group members were an eclectic assembly of talents and backgrounds, who simply wanted to find a way to help. The group was mostly American but also international, consisting of former military personnel and raw civilians, men and women of black, Hispanic, and white descent. We had a few doctors and nurses, one of whom was a doctor working in hospital administration, another a French biologist trapped in the city on his honeymoon, and a plastic surgeon. There was an Australian who worked as an outdoor guide and tracker, another who was a former SEAL, a Navy Lieutenant still in his fatigues, a former 10th Mountain Division soldier with the crossed skis patch on his shoulder, an African American woman who was an iron worker and brought her hard hat with her, and a rather scared, overweight, young public relations guy who didn’t seem to know how he got there.
The National Guard was getting organized somewhere outside of the city, I was told. They gave most of us military uniforms, and the doctors green scrubs or white HAZMAT suits. Almost 20 years later, remembering the mix of fear of the unknown of what we were going into and yet the quiet determination of the diverse group, it was one of the finest memories of my life. We sat in the back of the truck waiting and waiting, and finally, the driver came back. He looked up at us, and someone said what we were all thinking. “Hey man, let’s do this.” He nodded, and we took off.
We set up our Command Post at the Bloomberg building in the Financial District. They had turned over the entire base of the building to our group. Computers were pushed aside as we offloaded supplies into the office building. From there, we headed down again that night in the dark. We set up another base at Manhattan College. We offloaded supplies into the auditorium onto the stage to be taken up to those working on recovery. We stacked up hundreds of 6-foot Subway sandwiches on the stage with boxes of underwear, gloves, and other things. After piling the auditorium full, we waited for a time for instructions. After a bit, a surgeon who had come down with us returned. It was late at night, and he said he saw a building fall. He looked at me in a penetrating way. "You have to go down. You have to see it for yourself."
Most of the group stayed in the auditorium, but a few of us decided to leave and walked down the West Side Highway. It was confusing the closer we got. The highway was congested with thousands of vehicles trying to get in to assist. It was hard to breathe because of all the smoke. With each step, clouds of dust billowed up. For a few minutes, we wore the paper masks we had been given, but soon discarded them as they were impossible to wear in the heat.
Our mission was to assist in search and rescue operations, but where to start? I had worked previously at the Mercantile Exchange at the edge of the World Trade Center. As I looked around, I couldn’t even make out most of the landmarks that I had known. It was all just gone. The first place I recognized was the Winter Garden. The Winter Garden was a huge glass atrium containing rows of the largest palm trees spreading over benches where people could sit and have lunch or watch concerts. Gone was the back of the atrium and the bridge that adjoined it, leaving a gaping hole showing only the wreckage of the Towers.
Banks of lights had been set up by workers around one area they were working on, which might have been the North Tower. Looking through the gaping hole in the Atrium at the lights that shone up from where rescue workers labored, the base of one of the towers was visible. It rose stories up into the night, now just twisted pillars of steel and concrete. Those massive pillars, so white in contrast to the darkness and the light below, looked like pale fingers of an immense hand reaching from the ruin.
I stood transfixed. I remembered the beauty of the garden, the families having lunch, the couples taking wedding pictures on those steps. What had been the center of the financial district was now just a heap. While we were there, two more buildings or parts of buildings collapsed with a thunderous rumble, and everyone ran in bedlam, not even knowing where to go. Around us, things were still falling off buildings. Rescue workers would sound alarms at times, and everyone would take off like hell, with no one knowing which direction to run in the smoke and dark. After one of the buildings came down, a group of ours was hiding by another when an engineer came screaming for them to get away from it as it was damaged and was going to collapse. Around us, here and there were dozens of fire and emergency vehicles that had been caught in the collapse, most twisted and mangled, some half buried in the rubble.
We met some of the National Guard soldiers who were first sent down after the towers collapsed. All of them were black I could see, and I spoke to one briefly. He described arriving just after the collapse and seeing hundreds of casualties, bodies everywhere. He said the buildings had become bombs when they went down, throwing debris in all directions, cutting down and tearing apart people in all directions.
Fires were still burning and the clouds of drywall dust and powder arose with every step. Steel rebar and concrete were everywhere, and everything seemed to have a sharp edge to it. We came down to help with the rescue effort but saw no one rescued during our time there. Occasionally, rescue workers would carry a covered stretcher past. Many workers were cut by debris or overcome by smoke and dust. Many of the firefighters and police working so desperately were cut from the sharp metal everywhere and continued to work. Small groups of workers would fall asleep on the ground, and after a few minutes, they would get up and work again. On one side of the pile I got to by going through part of the tower's underground lit by hanging lights, there was a cart and several Hari Krishnas with a placard sign, handing out food and water. There was a surreal quality to it all.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, were laboring heroically but futilely on piles still burning in places, some rising stories up. It all stretched off farther than one could possibly see. Everyone was just pulling on beams with their hands or digging with white plastic paint buckets. I spoke to a Seabee Naval Captain there, dressed in fatigues. He said he was frustrated, mentioning that he could do so much work with his engineering skills but he could find no one in charge.
Everything was so confusing. We carried supplies in stacks to take them closer to the workers and then were told to stop and set up a perimeter to guard the area from people coming in. One of the Task Force commanders gathered us all together and said we were to keep anyone out and most especially no one was to take any pictures. "Men, women, this is a crime scene, a national tragedy, so we are tasked with protecting the area from any entry, but most especially no pictures. No one is permitted any souvenir pictures of a national tragedy!" A short time later, a police officer came by and started taking pictures. I apologized but told him no one was supposed to be taking any pictures. He started swearing and said his brothers were dead in the towers in fury but put away his camera and walked away. 5 minutes later, the word was passed and we abandoned the area to do something else equally confusing. I felt so ashamed.
After two days, they deactivated us. The Guard and regular Army that finally arrived replaced us. Our supply point at Manhattan College was taken over by the Red Cross, who continued our efforts to carry supplies into Ground Zero and assisted in recovery efforts. We had a final formation where Mike Bloomberg thanked our group for helping. One of our commanders, an old Colonel with a Special Forces patch, cried as he thanked us for coming forward to help in a time of need.
As they let us go, we were then told to consider all of our clothes to be hazardous waste, to place them in triple garbage bags, and dispose of them immediately. I don’t know how the firefighters and police stayed for weeks in that toxic mess. After leaving, my nose swelled double its size, red and painful, for almost 2 weeks, and my mouth went numb for a time. For weeks after, I coughed up the dust from my lungs, a grey thick mud that came out painfully, mixed with blood. When I returned to the military, they said my lung function was reduced by a third from where it should be. Since that time, I regularly see death notices in the news for firefighters and police who paid the price for their search for lost brothers and sisters.
Finally, our little New York Joint Provisional Task Force walked out of the area. As we left, we and all those coming from the site passed thousands who had gathered on the West Side Highway. They stood holding American flags, clapping, and thanking us as we passed. It was such a beautiful welcome after being at Ground Zero. I will see this sight till I die as it was so extraordinary, so beautiful, this spontaneous outpouring of love and patriotism.
I returned to the New York Aikikai before going up to my apartment. The class stopped to stare at the sight of me with my construction helmet and hazmat suit. I took it off, showered, dressed, and went onto the mat to practice. It felt so good to return and wash myself in the movement, the practice. It was like a rebirth. I went to stay with friends outside the city afterward to escape the miasma of New York. I awoke with images of planes going into buildings. That it was me falling from the towers.
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Shortly after I joined the Army Reserves. If something happened again, I wanted to be able to play a part in helping. From there, I was deployed to the Iraq war. I spent nearly two years in Iraq and then two and a half years in Afghanistan.
Through all that Aikido has sustained me. Each mission and each thing I went through, I returned to the practice. I returned to myself again by washing in the practice. I centered myself on the triangle of techniques that anchor the art - Ikkyo, Shihonage, Iriminage - and practiced by thousands of repetitions from the beaches of the Persian Gulf, the deserts of Iraq, and Afghanistan. Aikido is a remarkable blessing that must be preserved. It is a blessing that protects and sustains all who practice, even through great trial, great travail. I have used the art physically, to protect myself in life and death situations when attacked and spiritually to sustain myself through danger and till today.
Today, I have a dojo and teach it as my mentor Sugano Sensei taught it to me, as the Founder gave it, that Aikido is a life-giving art. I think some part of the art gave me a compassion for others, so I worked closely with Iraqis and Afghans, coming to love many as brothers and sisters, despite the dangers of war. "Aikido is love" is something I deeply believe, and this love has assisted me through all. This love that Aikido has at its core led me to love and marriage with a Middle Eastern Palestinian woman who is my wife, and a son I now teach Aikido as he also learns Arabic.
The hatred that led to 9/11 and the wars that followed will always exist. Aikido was born out of the ashes of war by the Founder as an antidote, as the Sword that gives Life. In my experience of September 11 and two wars, it is exactly that. It remains for us, who were given this remarkable, beautiful truth, to preserve it for the future, to be used as a fire against the dark, as love against hate, as warriors for peace. "A samurai is someone who fights with the power of love."
May we who practice fight for its preservation, to aid those in the future who will need Aikido's strength, Aikido's love. I will fight for this.
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