I started to work in the US at the end of May in 2001. The office was located in the suburb of New York City, actually in Connecticut as an exact address which was actually an alternative base for the financial industry from Manhattan.
I worked at that office when the terrorist attacks were conducted on 11 September 2001, which was 30 miles away from the lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center was located and I could not confirm what just happened with my eyes.
However, we soon understood New York Stock Exchange was out of order and realized that there was a real attack. The market was actually closed for the next two weeks, which was the longest shutdown in the history and there was no suspension even during Word War II. As time went on, we realized the impact was enormous that several buildings were collapsed with two towers of WTC.
It was an event several months after I went to the US and I had not visited many places until then, but I went to WTC, a week before this terrorist attack. One of my friends came to see me and asked me to introduce the Wall Streel as I worked at the financial company, which was why I went to the lower Manhattan. There were not many attractions around there, one of the most significant was the World Trade Center, hence we stopped a car in front and discussed whether going inside or not.
After all, there were many tall buildings in Tokyo and we decided to move to another place, which meant that I went to the WTC, but not going inside the building.
Adding to this, I went to Washington DC, a week before visiting the WTC, which was a pure sightseeing to see the White House from the distance and to see around the Capitol Hill. In the end, we went to the tower where we could see the Pentagon actually looked like a pentagon before going back to New York.
There were four airplanes hijacked by the terrorists on Sep 11, two of them crashed into the WTC and another into the Pentagon. The other was down during the flight, but it was said to target the Capitol Hill.
As you can see, I visited all the places in the previous two weekends.
FFF 