A Decade of Hope (49 page)

I spent a lot of time with my family, especially with my dad, who was often home. I had a lot of friends whose dads were doctors and always at the hospital or on call, and they didn't work regular nine-to-five, Mondaythrough-Friday jobs, like my father did. Now I appreciate more that he was home so often. It was great that he was there. He helped around the house. He helped my mom prepare food or helped with the dishes after dinner. He did a lot of puzzles, and I'd do them with him.

Our family was a close unit, and we did a lot together. I was really lucky that way. We would take two trips every year—to a beach during the winter, and in the summer we would go to Europe. I remember all my Japanese friends would always go to Japan for the entire summer, and growing up I was a little bit jealous of that, because I always wanted to spend my summer in Japan. But my parents wanted to go to Europe.

Now I'd take Europe over Japan any day, and I'm really grateful that we took these trips. When I was in sixth grade I had to give a history report, and my assigned country was the Netherlands. And so my dad planned a trip there, which was great.

When I was growing up, my dad was definitely the good cop. My mom was definitely the disciplinarian. He never yelled at my brother and me, never raised his voice. I remember one time I had a class project to make tepees, because we were learning about Native Americans or something. I had to make a diorama and was having trouble with it, and my dad began helping me. But he ended up doing it for me, and then my mom got so mad at the both of us. He always liked helping out.

I had no idea what my father did for a living, to be honest. I knew he worked for a bank, and traded something, but I had no idea what. It wasn't until I had to fill out college applications and list my father's occupation that I asked him. He finally said he was like a money broker, in currencies. My dad never really talked about work much.

My dad started at Mitsubishi Trust, which sent him to London and Los Angeles, and then New York. We would move every couple of years. The company wanted to send him back to Japan, and to move to another place in Asia a year later. But he didn't want my brother and me to keep moving so often, so he actually left that firm and joined another company that promised he would not have to relocate from New York.

My brother recently moved back to Japan. He's seven years older than I and works for a record company. My mother has moved to Midtown, just twenty blocks from me. She sold our house in Port Washington after I graduated from college because it was a big house and she was there all by herself. I think it's a lot better for her in the city, and she keeps herself busy there. She volunteers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art once a week. She's in a choir group. She has practice and concerts. It's good.

My father's company, Euro Brokers, lost sixty-one employees that day. I think they were on the eighty-fifth floor, so they were right around the impact zone. Sometime after 9/11 they invited all the family members to visit the company. I got to meet the other employees, and it wasn't until then that I really understood what my dad did on a daily basis.

On the morning of 9/11 everything changed. I was at school at Tufts, in Boston, and just starting my sophomore year. It was the first week of classes, and I had an 8:30 macroeconomics class. Most of my friends were in the class with me, and I remember commenting on what a beautiful day it was. Boston is only four hours away from New York, so their weather is pretty similar, and the skies were just a gorgeous blue. The class was about an hour long, so it didn't end until 9:30 or so.

I had no idea what had happened during that hour. I had to stay a little longer to talk to the professor, and at the same time I kind of heard people talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center. My first reaction was like, What happened? A plane? No one would imagine a big passenger plane. I just thought it was a single-engine, a small, single-pilot plane, an accident. The kids who were talking, they had no idea, no details of what kind of plane it was. They didn't know if anyone had gotten hurt.

When I got back to my dorm I went to my friends' room, because I knew they would understand what had happened. I tried to call my dad, but he only had a work phone and no cell phone, and all of his office lines were dead. I couldn't get in touch with him. And so I called my mom, who hadn't heard from him either. My father had been in the North Tower in 1993 when the first bombing happened. My mother said, “He lived through one attack. I'm sure he's fine. He'll come home. He doesn't have a cell phone. Don't worry about it.” And I just had a really bad feeling. I don't think my mother ever thought he would die. She was concerned, but not too worried.

September 11 was a really long day. I had a friend whose dad did a lot of business in the World Trade Center, and she was worried, trying to get in touch with him. I remember just trying not to think about it. But every single news channel had it, and after a while they showed some of the people jumping out of the buildings. My brother was in Japan at the time, and I remember him later saying, “I just hope Dad wasn't one of the people who jumped, because, why would you do that?”

Now, as I think about it, that whole day, that week, and probably the whole next month is kind of a big blur.

For the first couple of days I stayed at college. But on Thursday, the thirteenth, my friends drove me home. I didn't know what was going on, and I just wanted to go home. We crossed the Whitestone Bridge going to Long Island, and we could see New York City from the bridge. I looked over and saw the smoke coming up from the World Trade Center. Every car on the bridge slowed down to look at that, and it was eerie. I had seen it on TV, but seeing it in person was different, horrifying. My mom was so grateful to my friends for driving me home, because there were no planes, no trains, no way for me to get there. It was so good of them.

My brother, Hiroyuki, was on the first plane out of Japan. I don't remember what day that was, but he was on the first flight out. He almost couldn't get on that flight, because of all the journalists from Japan who wanted to cover the Ground Zero story. The flight got booked up, and a family friend got into an argument with whatever airline it was, saying, “This is ridiculous. He's a family member. You need to give him a seat over a journalist.” So it was good to have him home.

We went to Pier 94 to fill out all that paperwork you had to fill out for missing persons, to submit DNA samples, and to file the police report.

One of my father's coworkers, Brian Clark, actually escaped from the towers and was interviewed by the local newspaper. I read the story and saw he worked for Euro Brokers, so I called the journalist for Brian's number. I asked Brian, “Do you remember seeing my dad?” But they worked on opposite sides of the floor, he hadn't seen him, and so he didn't have any information. I was so disappointed. I remember just trying to call anyone. Looking back, it was probably insensitive to call him, for he probably didn't want to talk about it. Imagine, escaping the World Trade Center.

For the first few days I kept up with my schoolwork, my assignments. But I realized I had to ask myself,
Do I take the semester off or do I go back to school?
There was so much uncertainty at that point. We still weren't sure if he was alive or not. They were still looking for people at Ground Zero, so I had hope. After a while I decided to take the semester off. One of the classes I was enrolled in was actually about the Hiroshima atomic bomb. I remember reading some of my class assignments, stories about people who had gone into work in Hiroshima like any other day, and the bomb dropped, and their world was turned upside down. I had to read a book about it and write an essay, and I remember comparing it to 9/11. I just saw so many parallels. I actually never got a chance to retake that class.

On the day we went to Pier 94 to fill out paperwork and give them the DNA samples, you couldn't walk five feet without someone coming up to you and asking, “Do you want to talk about this? I'm a social worker, if you need to talk,” and I just remember thinking at that point—I had just taken Intro to Psych—that I was going through the natural grieving steps, the whole anger and bargaining process. But now, looking back, I don't remember being angrier than normal. I remember thinking,
Why? Why me, and why my family?

 

I have never used the word “murdered.” I just feel that America wasn't at war against al Qaeda. I guess my father was murdered, but I never say that word, and I feel for some reason that he was an unfortunate victim of al Qaeda trying to send a message to America. Maybe for some it sounds like the same thing as murder, but I don't know if I like using that word. In our family we actually don't talk about it too much. While I do kind of blame Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, part of the reason I might not use the word “murder” is because murder, to me, is when someone is targeted specifically, and I don't think my dad was targeted as a person. He just worked there, although I do think he represented what al Qaeda was trying to destroy.

My dad was an immigrant, and he actually died as a Japanese citizen. He was trying to get American citizenship. He had a green card, and I think he represented the idea that everyone comes to America and tries to make a living for himself. He represented the American dream and what America stands for, like freedom. My dad wanted my brother and me both to grow up to have an American education, and I don't think he liked Japanese society too much. My folks moved from Japan when they were about thirty, so they spent most of their adult lives outside of Japan. So I really do think my dad represented the American dream, and that's what al Qaeda attacked.

They recovered my dad's body very quickly, in the last week of September. Two police officers came to our house and told us that they found him early in the morning. They told us that his body had been severely damaged, that it had been burned, and in water, and they recommended that we not look at it. So I have no idea how intact it was. I like to think it was pretty much intact. I've never verified it, but it's probably pretty easy to do so. There were fewer than three hundred intact bodies recovered, and I always consider my dad to have been one of those. We were able to have a service for him around the first week of October. At that time I had no idea how lucky, relatively lucky, my family was, that they recovered his body.

I've met people who had only an elbow or another small part of their loved one recovered. I can't imagine how hard that is. I think finding my father helped me, because it happened at the end of September, so I was able to kind of start the process of closure earlier than most. You know, you start accepting the reality, just trying to move on.

We had had hope, but then I had to accept that my dad had passed away at the World Trade Center. We had him cremated, and we buried him. I was able then to start the healing process.

There was a gentleman who passed away at the World Trade Center whose name was Keiji Takahashi, and my dad was Keiichiro Takahashi. Because the names are so similar, a lot people mixed them up, and we would get things for Keiji Takahashi, or the other family would get things for Keiichiro Takahashi. Part of me still kind of thinks that maybe they mixed up the DNA, and the person that we actually buried is Keiji Takahashi. I don't know if they found Mr. Keiji Takahashi, and because of that, sometimes I think that maybe my dad's still out there alive. I just sometimes feel that he became something like a dissociative figure and just picked up and moved to another city and set up a whole new life. You know, he never had that option beforehand. And I know that that's unlikely, but it's a small hope. But for the most part, I have accepted that he's not going to come back, ever.

 

One of the things I think about when I go into the Tribute Center is that I had a very sheltered childhood. I didn't really have many worries. My biggest worries when I awoke on 9/11, since it was the beginning of the semester and I didn't even have to worry about tests, were getting my reading done for class, or what party I was going to go to that weekend, or what I was going to wear. Typical college issues. But after 9/11 that all changed, and my worries became,
Okay. Well, how is my mom going to take care of herself?
She didn't work, and my father was the provider for the family. More important,
What is she going to do for health insurance?
Then there was the filling out of paperwork, getting a death certificate, and the whole beneficiary payouts for the life insurance. My mom speaks English, but for something like going to Pier 94, she'd rather just have me take care of it, because my English is better. And I remember thinking
, I don't want to do it.
Or my dad had been paying for my tuition, so I was fortunate in that I didn't have to take out student loans or work during college. But then I realized,
Oh, I guess I have to start working.
I remember thinking that I had to grow up pretty quickly, and I guess at nineteen most people think they are grown-up already. But I wasn't grown-up yet, and it was a dramatic shift. My mom had been taking care of me, but now I felt as if I had to take care of her, and I felt that dramatic shift.

The Euro Brokers people were amazing—they were so helpful. They did everything that they could to make it easier for the family members. They actually provided health insurance and life coverage. That was the biggest thing I worried about, because it's so hard to get health insurance. They were also very supportive and set up a fund in which one day every year all the brokers give up their commissions and donate it toward the Euro Brokers fund for the families [the Euro Brokers Relief Fund]. They also held a service for the sixty-one employees they lost.

But after 9/11 it was hard on my mother. I think it was the first time I saw my mom cry. She has really supportive friends. She always had friends in from town, always over talking and supporting us. I think we had people over almost every day just for company, to make sure we were eating. And one of our family's friends came and stayed with us for about a week. My mom doesn't really like talking about it. I don't think she has gone down to Ground Zero. We get invited to go to the memorial every year, and she's never gone down there for that. Even for the memorial.