Zoey Hada’s dream is to become a FBI agent working in anti-terrorism, partly because she’s a police officer’s kid, but also because of a terror attack in New York City that happened before she was even born.
“I feel like it brings people together in a sense, like we don’t want this to occur again, and for me personally, I want to go into the criminal justice system. I want to go into the anti-terrorism industry,” the 17-year-old Baldwin High School senior said. “And a lot of that has to do with 9/11, an attack on U.S. soil. This is my home too, so it makes you want to protect your home.”
Most people remember exactly where they were the moment the planes hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. The post-9/11 generation knows where their parents were. But even though the kids born in or after 2001 learned about the tragedy secondhand, through family members, history books and memorials, it doesn’t hit home any less.
“We can’t understand that type of shock and pain of seeing it live, but I feel like we can still have a sense of understanding of how tragic it was and how sad it really was just to have so many lives lost and to see such a big event happen,” said Mahie Dean, a 16-year-old junior at Kamehameha Schools Maui. “We may not have that direct sense of like seeing it, but we can definitely sympathize and understand what it was like.”
Dean was in third grade when she first learned about 9/11. It was the anniversary of the attacks and Kamehameha Schools’ guidance counselor had showed them a video of the planes hitting the towers.
“I was only 8 years old, so it was kind of a bit of a shock to see that happen,” she said. “I went home and talked to my parents about it.”
Dean said her dad remembers the exact moment it happened. He was working an early morning shift at the Ritz-Carlton, and when he went into the hotel’s cafeteria, he saw it playing on TV.
“He told himself, ‘I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,'” she said. “Even now we still remember that day. … Our parents lived through it, but we’ll only know it through textbooks or watching videos of it.”
Hada said her mom was working as a dispatcher at the Maui Police Department when the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
“She told me she remembers being in the break room with her co-workers and just watching the TV and being frightened,” Hada said. “Where is the next attack going to be? How are those people doing? How could someone do this? It was just a lot of uncertainty and fear.”
Like Dean and Hada, Seabury Hall senior Kaylee Volner first learned about the Sept. 11 attacks in elementary school, but said she didn’t really understand it until the summer before high school when she got to visit the 9/11 memorial in New York.
“I got to go through the whole museum and see how important it truly was, and that kind of just opened my eyes to how big this event was and how it changed America and honestly the world,” Volner said.
By the time Dean, Hada and Volner were old enough to go to school, life as their parents had known it had completely changed. America was at war, security was tighter and travel would never be the same. Dean said she had no idea people used to be able to go all the way to the airline gate without a ticket.
“Before I always thought that happened in TV shows or movies,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was such an easy thing back then. All I’ve ever known is TSA.”
Pre-9/11 travel policies also came as a shock to Hada.
“When our teacher was explaining, these are the reasons we have TSA at the airport, I couldn’t even fathom the fact that you could just walk up to the gate without anything,” she said. “You could bring liquids on the plane. You could do whatever you wanted. That’s something completely foreign to us now.”
Taking off shoes at security and putting shampoo in check-in bags are only a few of the changes that have shaped the post-9/11 generation.
“It definitely has impacted, I feel, how we have grown up compared to other generations,” Volner said. “Honestly I feel like our generation has a good understanding of why it was an important event and how we have changed through that. I think that will continually affect us and change our perspective on everything. Although we didn’t experience the tragedy, we are still affected by it.”
Hada said she feels an emotional attachment to 9/11, especially knowing that first responders died or suffered health issues for years afterward.
“I worry every day about my dad, and so I couldn’t imagine losing him in something as tragic as that,” she said.
It’s his example as an officer and the sense of duty she feels after 9/11 that drives her desire to one day be in the FBI or the Secret Service.
“He doesn’t tell me about things, but I can feel the emotions coming off of him coming home, and I know he doesn’t say anything to protect other people,” she said of her dad. “That’s something super admirable and that’s something I want to do — protect my community, not for the praises, but for the fact of just being there.”
* Colleen Uechi can be reached at cuechi@mauinews.com.
