story10704.xml

story10704.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-07-23

The most important thing that was on everybody's mind before the attacks was securing the beer suplly for the TC-1 lock down. The same typhoon that wrecked havoc on the island 5 days before had turned around an almost full 180 degrees and was threatening the island once again. Unfortunately, the typhoon brought more devastating news than broken trees and flipped cars. I had just gotten off the phone with my Japanese girlfriend, explaining to her that even though work was cancelled tomorrow, I was very tired and I was going to bed. Lights were off, my dormitory room door was locked, and my T.V. stayed as silent as it did for the past two hours. I did not have any idea of the chaos that was being broadcasted on both the AFN channel and the local Jap-station. If I had my way, eight hours would have past till I realized what had happened. My "lucky break" came five minutes later after I had closed my eyes in attempt to fall asleep. My girlfriend called, demanding that I turned on the T.V. I naturally objected, citing the importance of a military man's sleep. A second later, I grew enough brains to ask her why. Her response is etched in my memory forever; "You're not going to believe me if I told you." Turning on the T.V., I saw what many around the world was seeing: a fire had broken out on the WTC. I don't know why but I assumed everybody made it out and now this is the horror that the news was trying to embelish for their own self-fish, award-winnig reasons. I walked outside of my room and down the hallway, noticing that it was unusually quiet, even in someplace as isolated as the top floor of my building. I ventured down to where I had friends down on the second floor but nobody was around. I then went to see if our units newbee was asleep in his room on the third floor. He was wide awake and asked me immediately if I saw what happened to the WTC. I told him that it was just another building fire. He told me I was grieviously wrong and showed me on his t.v. what everyone else was now seeing; both towers in smoke. He told me that the second tower was hit right before everyone's eyes. Everything I had learned in anti-terrorism class became my intuitive consciousness and I was in search of my deployable communications team sleeping in the dorm to tell them they need to get their deployable packs ready just in case we were needed at a moments notice. Other things I ended up doing that night was preparing the dormitory for anti-terrorist measures and trying to contact anybody (family, friends, coworkers, etc... to either explain the situation or to find out more. We never went into TC-1, complete lock down of the base due to typhoon conditions, but we stayed in Threatcon Delta for what seemed the longest time. On top of that, all AF personnel on Okinawa were not allowed to go anywhere for five months. Although it was hard, my girlfriend stayed true to me and waited. We eventually got married.
-Former SRA Belanger