Kei Sugimoto, a Japanese-American who was 24 years old at the time, has released a nearly 1-hour, never-before-seen video on his YouTube channel.
Sugimoto was a Mainframe Operator at the time at Nissho Iwai Shoji when the terrorist attacks occurred and filmed the footage from the roof of 64 St. Marks Place in New York City.
He used a Sony VX2000 with a teleconverter to capture the harrowing moments, according to his Youtube description.
The hour long video starts with the aftermath of both planes hitting. During the filming, both buildings collapse.. The bright blue sky in the background is still something that people who were alive and old enough to have memories will never forget from that day. The video also portrays the helplessness that everyone felt who was watching it happen.
It is also incredible to think about how people in that ‘time’ filmed things longer. Our brains were just wired to keep a camcorder going. While today the minute video on TikTok just ends.
It is continuously unfathomable to consider the passage of time.. at the time this video is uploaded, kids born on 9/11 will have been legally able to drink in the United States for two years already..
NEW YORK — Two were getting ready for church. Another was on vacation, just waking up. A fourth munched on breakfast while waiting for friends to take him to a beach party.
Then they got word: The Japanese had struck Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack, triggering America’s involvement in World War II. That “Day of Infamy” — Dec. 7, 1941 — became known as the most dramatic and monumental of the last century in America, one that singularly changed the course of history.
Now it shares that classification with Sept. 11, 2001, a fact not lost in the memories of the surviving veterans.
Daniel S. Fruchter, an Army corporal in 1941, said the first thing that sprang to mind Sept. 11 was the catchphrase that spread after the Japanese struck: “Remember Pearl Harbor — Keep America Alert.”
“A widow of a Pearl Harbor survivor called on the 11th and said, ‘It’s happening again,’” said Fruchter, 83, now state chairman of the New York Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. “I thought that, too: ‘Here we go again.’ I was mad at our own lack of alertness and our lack of knowing what’s going on in the world around us.”
Sixty years ago Friday, Fruchter was eating what he thought was his last breakfast as a soldier. He was scheduled to leave Hawaii the next day, and was thinking about his plans for a seaside celebration that afternoon.
“I never went to that beach party,” he said. “Life changed.”
Fruchter stayed, of course, and with his colleagues set to work preparing for war. “I didn’t feel,” he remembered. “We were just doing our jobs. We were busy.”
Fruchter and an Army buddy didn’t get their first look at the devastation until midnight. Only then did they begin to understand the gravity of what had happened.
“For the first time, we could actually see the damage,” he said. “That night, standing on top of the crater overlooking Honolulu and all of Pearl Harbor, we saw the fleet burning.”
The “Keep America Alert” message also flashed through the mind of Navy vet Bernard “Bing” Walenter, now 81, after Sept. 11.
“If everyone would start remembering Pearl Harbor, maybe we could stop a few of these surprise attacks,” said the former machinist striker and current state chair of California’s Pearl Harbor Survivors. “Here it’s still happening, after all this time.”
Walenter was working in the machine shop of the USS Medusa when the Japanese attacked.
“It’s hard to say what it felt like at the time. I was confused. I couldn’t believe what was happening,” he said. Walenter spent Dec. 7 of 1941 refilling one of the vessel’s guns with powder — though they never fired a shot that day.
Across the island of Oahu, George L. Murray, then an off-duty, vacationing staff sergeant in the Army’s Chemical Corps, was just waking up when he heard the news.
“The shock scared the hell out of us,” said Murray, 83, who chairs the Alabama chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors. “We were stunned. It was an unexpected war.”
Like Fruchter, Murray was reminded of Pearl Harbor on the morning of Sept 11.
“It was similar in that it was a surprise attack,” he said. “That stunned us again. You sit down and watch TV and can’t believe something like that was happening. One surprise attack in your lifetime is enough.”
But not everyone who lived through both events sees a link between them.
“I felt a lot of anger on Sept. 11, but I didn’t associate it with the attack on Pearl Harbor,” said Julius Finnern, 82, of Wisconsin, a national secretary for Pearl Harbor Survivors. “Other than the fact that both were sneak attacks, I found very little comparison.”
Unlike the vast majority of Americans who were blindsided by the attacks of Sept. 11, some vets said they weren’t completely shocked when Pearl Harbor was hit.
“We were pretty well-adjusted to the idea that we were at war with the Japanese,” said Francesco Costagliola, then a Naval ensign on the USS Phoenix cruiser. “It wasn’t that much out of the realm of reality … It was just the first day of a long, hard war.”
As they do each year, these and scores of other Pearl Harbor veterans will observe Friday’s annivesary of the attack. Some will travel to Hawaii, while others will attend local memorial events.
And how will survivors react to this year’s anniversary, the first since September’s disaster?
“After all these years, I don’t expect I’ll feel any different as I have in the past,” Murray said. “I’m angry about it, but you have to get over it. The world keeps turning, and you have to turn with it.”
After all, for Pearl Harbor survivors and other World War II veterans, Dec. 7 has been fraught with emotion every year since 1941.
“I get real weepy-eyed,” Finnern said. “But I am proud. You’d better believe I am.”
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday released the first of what is expected to be several documents related to its investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suspected Saudi government support for the hijackers, following an executive order by President Joe Biden.The newly declassified document, which is from 2016, provides details of the FBI’s work to investigate the alleged logistical support that a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles provided to at least two of the men who hijacked planes on September 11, 2001. The document, released on the 20th anniversary of the deadly attacks, still contains significant redactions.It details multiple connections and witness testimony that prompted FBI suspicion of Omar al-Bayoumi, who was purportedly a Saudi student in Los Angeles but whom the FBI suspected to be a Saudi intelligence agent. The FBI document describes him as deeply involved in providing “travel assistance, lodging and financing” to help the two hijackers.
The Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, previously said Wednesday that it “welcomes the release of” the FBI documents and that “any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.”
At a 9/11 anniversary ceremony in Shanksville, Pa., former President George W. Bush recounted the heroism of those passengers aboard Flight 93 as well as the brave servicemen and servicewoman who have responded since that time…
It is the anniversary of September 10, 2001. The final day of peace. It’s only right to celebrate the anniversary of this mundane day.
The final time prior to the deadly terror attacks on the United States–attacks that are etched into memories, yet fading with each passing calendar page turning.
While there are a few specials airing that try to bring the horror back into the forefront again, a new generation of children growing up has only history books to reveal what happened on 9/11, as the YouTube videos of that attacks have become buried or censored.
After two decades, we ponder what else could be offered.. what else could be said.
We almost feel that this 20th anniversary post could be it, the final one. (Some of my friends who tell me I am fixated on this event too much will doubt this is my final say however.)
As time moves on, so do emotions. So does that electric feeling of that day–you would have to have been alive to have felt it. The idea that a day so perfect of weather, so pure and blue of a sky, could also carry with it such intense rage and flames that would alter the landscape of a nation but also the course of a planet.
You still shudder when you see the old news reports of the first plane.. the way anchors were innocently pondering how such an ‘accident’ could occur. The pilot, we thought, must have had a health crisis. This terrible accident hopefully will be cleaned up, addressed appropriately, and we could go back to fighting about stem cells and the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s presidency, along with enjoying the triumphant return of Michael Jordan.
Until that second plane.. Until those stunned anchors had the carpet pulled from them. We, as a nation, were not ready for what was about to happen.
Within an instant, suddenly “everything changed.” Yes, that became an overused statement at the time. As the drumbeat of time beat on, we see how regardless of overuse, the statement could not be more true.
Many scholars today will argue that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump would not have occurred without 9/11 first happening. That each and every direction of history since that morning had its road paved with the blood from the attacks.
This is one particular poignant moment of this Youtube video that plays 9/11 as it happened on NBC’s Today Show that morning. Around 5 minutes and 40 seconds into the video, directly before it cuts to a young and then-scandal-free Matt Lauer announcing a plane had struck one of the towers, there is a McDonalds Commercial: The advertisement starts with a question: “What makes you smile?”
This could not be a more mundane ad for McDonalds breakfast, its egg and pancakes, and Minute Maid orange juice. But that is also what is magical about it: The mundane nature of the spot!
Mundane died that day. Mundane became something unknown after the events that unfolded seconds after this ad..
You could almost conjecture that the McDonalds ditty was the final whimper of the 20th century. Innocence, if we really truly even had it, was gone only seconds later when the “we love to see your smile” spot turned into a live stream of terror attacks in three separate locations.
x x x
While terrorists were plotting and buying porn the night before 9/11, others were simply going living the final day of what could be considered normalcy. Also the same day, a small snippet appeared in the Boston GLOBE about Osama Bin Laden. It is very possible that people within airport and on one of the planes hijacked, people were potentially ready this article that described how the United States government was given out matches with Bin Laden’s image on it to remind people about the bounty on his head:
There were hints of what was to come on 9/10.
Front page headlines couldn’t been more dull, but a few interesting tidbits showed up in a few places that now seem to be prophetic.
Like this headline from the Allentown Morning CALL running an AP dispatch on September 10 about violence erupting in the Middle East:
Or this headline of an editorial that ran in the Pottsville REPUBLICAN HERALD on 9/11 written by columnist Jim Hoagland:
The 9/10 Thunder Enlightening in the Republican HERALD could not have been more dull! One caller saying Bush should resign and move to Mexico, a North Schuylkill student complaining about rules at the school, and someone angry that Mahanoy Area’s school band didn’t play at the Friday night football game:
The headline on NEWSDAY on 9/10 included a above the fold “wave of terror” bold statement about the Middle East. Little did anyone know what the terror headline would be the next day on the front page of tjhe same paper:
David Kovalcin had a habit of drawing smiling portraits of the whole family — his wife, Elizabeth, and their daughters, Rebecca, 4, and Marina, 1 — on the steamy glass in the bathrooms. Now Rebecca draws her own, with only three people. Mr. Kovalcin, 42, was a passenger on Flight 11, on a business trip for Raytheon, where he was a senior mechanical engineer.
Mrs. Kovalcin said they had carved out a “Father Knows Best” kind of life, with him coming home at six every evening, choosing to know his family well rather than to work longer hours for more money.
She remembers that her husband had trouble sleeping two nights before his departure. “He woke me up at 3 a.m., and said ‘I’m pacing the house. I can’t sleep,’ ” she said. “I rubbed his head and tried to calm him down. He was very distressed, but had no idea what it was. Then three days later I remembered, and thought, ‘Holy cow, I wonder what that was about.’ ”
The morning he left home he had written a note for his family: “Rebecca, Marina and Mommy, I will miss everybody very much. See you Friday night.” At the end he added, “I fed the dogs but not the fish.”
A few days before 9/10, and 9/11, I went to the movies with friends. On September 6 to be exact! I was reminded of this when my friend, cleaning out his house, actually found the ticket stub from the screening of JEEPERS CREEPERS.
After the movie, the obligatory midnight Perkins breakfast ensued. I recall us meeting and talking to a group of women–we were 21 and dumb at the time so the amateurs we were failed to even get a phone number! But one of the girls told us she was joining the army only a day or so later. The thought at the time, which still sticks out in my brain these many years later, is how she joined an army that was devoid of war only to be most likely thrust into Afghanistan months later. To quote a Green Day song, I still wonder whatever happened to old Whatshername?
For some, it’s been very difficult smiling ever since.
9/10/01 .. may serenity rest in peace. Killed by the events 24 hours later that will repeat in our brains until our earthly conclusion.
The headlines on the Horror Report on 9/10/01 were as follows:
May God have mercy on the souls lost that day and the families who were effected by the tragic events.. by first responders who died slow deaths to cancer.. and the military men and woman who sacrificed so much–including Whatshername.
I have always struggled to know why I, along with many others, watch footage of 911 every year … also several times throughout the year. It seems ghoulish, it seems like we just relive a snuff film in real time every moment. For me, there is a sense of guilt that comes with it because of how it can also induce nostalgia.
For me, I become nostalgic for the year I turned 21, the moment when my youth seemed the most buoyant and yet obnoxious.. and a time when things seemed much more simple.
Ever since the events of that day occurred headlines about it have been taken over by Xenaphobia, warmongers, and conspiracy theories of all nature. If you were listening to the talking heads and pundits, then you most likely have been told the exact reason why 9/11 occurred. Some will give you the backstory on the government officials that they believe were actually behind it.
Others will tell you about how we should have bombed Middle Eastern countries to smithereens because of their support of the terrorists. A few may point out how inept American leadership was in the summer leading up to the event. Remember that memo given to Bush during his August vacation ??
We do this all the time, we relive the nasty events and try to shad them in a civilized way. People strive to bring some common sense and normalcy of thought progression as to why things occurred.
But I don’t believe that is why we watch footage of 9/11, and not why we relive the same 102 minutes time after time.
I actually think the reason is quite simple.
For the raw emotion.
The true and visceral raw emotion that it brings, it seems real. We can relive those days when commercials along with TV coverage of the mundane and trivial was all we cared about. September 11 was the end of the Seinfeld era, the conclusion of the decade about nothing. Stock markets were strong, mortgage loans being given out like candy.. the conclusion came, though, and the piper was paid.
I can recall the footage of the today show one Bryant Gumbel was cautiously curious as to why some would say the second plane flying into a building was a purposeful act. Because we were naïve, because we were innocent. A generation that grew up lost in space forgot the space that they were in. The dotcom bubble was first, then everything burst at 9 AM on September 11th..
When I watch coverage from those moments, when I view the footage again, and when I relive my own emotions and memories from that day, I don’t do it in any joy of those who perished.
When viewing those television moments prior to the breaking news, I actually feel in some strange way like 911 will not happen. When I watch the footage of the ‘Everybody loves Raymond’ interview on CBS before the first plane hit, or the fact that Nokia stock was up 5% and Motorola was closing on CNN, I feel like the next moments actually will not occur.
An impossibility..
Because we all know what occurs next, we all know the planes crash and that the Pentagon is it in that building is fall down, that President Bush is flown around the nation and Dick Cheney is in a bunker in no mans land. We all know that the speaker of the house is rushed out of DC and that news coverage comes to grips with the fact that their world, along with ours, has been changed forever with them only mere seconds.
But we still watch, and I don’t believe we watch because it’s fun. I believe we watch because even to this day we have not come to grips with this moment and we have not been able to actually make sense of what we saw.
We’ve gone to war, we debated who is behind the events, we have become divided as a nation and almost 20 years later a much more racist and bigoted world. None of it had to happen, but it did. And we watch the coverage of this day to feel that true and raw emotion because somehow perhaps we get united in our sadness in our anger. Even if it’s only for 102 minutes and it goes away once the replay on YouTube has ended.
In 1814, while the British red coats were in the midst of burning down the White House, the Library of Congress, and other governmental institutions, President James Madison had to evacuate. His wife, Dolly, the first lady of the United States, stood in the White House until she knew for sure that a painting of General Washington was safe. The nation was in a standstill. President Madison in a panic about how he would reconvene the government and make the central system work again. On August 25 of 1814, with a glowing red flame in the sky above D.C., nature’s wrath stepped in. The ‘storm of providence,’ as it was dubbed, hit the nation’s Capitol. A fierce wind, perhaps even a small hurricane as some speculate, moved inland. British soldiers reportedly had to lay down in order not to be blown away. A tornado—yes, and maybe more than one twister—formed and moved directly through the city. The blinding rains put out the fires the Brits had set. Legend has it that when British soldiers, while retreating, asked what kind of storms are in this country, someone replied that it was Providence to drive the enemies from the young nation.
If the war of 1812’s conclusion was settled in part by the hand of God, then where was providence on September 11, 2001?
The longest living storm to ever have formed did so in the Atlantic Ocean on September 1, 2001. The hurricane was named Erin. It was weak, and continued to strengthen and weaken during its lifespan in the open waters. At one point, Erin fell apart and dissipated on September 5 of that year, only to reform again and whirl back into a sizable wave.
On September 9, 2001, Erin strengthened itself into a major hurricane. It passed by Bermuda 105 miles east.. It turned. It began to barrel itself directly for the city that never sleeps.. Satellite of the storm is chilling. Erin is massive and swirls right off the East Coast of the United States.
Three hours before the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 began, Hurricane Erin took an immediate and obvious U-Turn away from New York City.
Repeating myself on purpose, where was Providence the way it was there in 1814 during the attack on D.C.?
There are abundant conspiracy theories as to why the hurricane took a quick turn. Some speculate it was HAARP, weather malfeasance. Theories are fun.
But the simple truth: A very strong cold front moved through the Eastern part of the United States, including New York City, and literally forced the storm to bounce away from the United States like it was on a pool table.
Those who were alive and recall what happened 15 years ago –my God, 15 years already—may also recall the beautiful weather across the nation. I live in the same location I did then, Eastern Pennsylvania. I remember the autumnal feel in the air that morning. The sun was brilliant and the skies were deep blue. It was a picture perfect day. It was actually quite possibly one of the most beautiful weather days I recall in my entire life. It was completely ruined and disjointed forever, however, by the acts of cruelty and terror as mostly Saudi hijackers boarded planes in the United States and crashed them into buildings.
If a chain of events did not occur, history may have been altered. It is really strange to contemplate that. But picture a slower cold front.. picture a hurricane that, suddenly, moves into New York City with whipping winds and flooding rains. Truth be told, there was not much preparation for Erin or even news coverage. I challenge you to go back and find any information of the city preparing for evacuation. Every prediction was clear: The strong Canadian cold front was going to ruin the chances of peril due to a storm.
Nature’s wrath never occurred that day. Instead, God’s brilliant sun beamed down from blue skies over burning buildings and people committing suicide by jumping as opposed to burning to death.
If Erin would have come closer … or even struck .. planes would have been grounded. People would have been moved out from their homes. 9/11 would have become famous for an entirely different reason.
Providence, perhaps, would have prevented something that we never even would have known was going to occur.
But none of that happened. Erin did not slam land, but instead rolled away and paved the way for one of the most disastrous days in history since Pearl Harbor. Or even since 1814..
While researching and thinking about what I would write about on this anniversary of 9/11, I went to the famed archive.org Wayback Machine. To my surprise, very little captures of famed weather sites exist from September of 2001. It is now nearly impossible for me to even recall my own mindset at the time. I was a Weather Channel addicted nerd since 10 years old. And for some reason I don’t recall knowing a thing about Hurricane Erin at the time the storm was poised to do something off the coastline of the United States.
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The other day I tuned into the YouTube channel of Mark Dice. He was doing his man on the street interviews and found just about no one in Southern California that knew much of anything about 9/11. Some people saying a “Hussein” perpetrated the attacks, others claiming it was Iraq and Syria behind them.. 15 years of life takes its toll. And yes, history moves fast. But we are obviously doomed to repeat it without proper knowledge of where we have come from or what we have been through..
Fifteen years ago this September I was working full time as a waiter, staying up very late every night listening to Art Bell until sunrise, and having the time of my life. I just turned 21. I was invincible, as other 21 years olds are when they hit that age. Life doesn’t really happen yet.
My father woke me up that morning and told me we were attacked.. early on, he blamed the Chinese! He was from a time when nations struck, not group of extremists or those aligned with others in the darkness of terror. We watched live on TV as more buildings were attacked, the Pentagon was hit, and as a plane fell from the sky about three hours from my house. If you look at the flight path records for the hijacked planes on 9/11, at least 1 would have flown above the county I live in as it did a U-turn back to New York City. We filled our car tanks with gas due to fear of price gouging. There was a lot of fear that day. The entire nation had a sense of shellshock, an immediate and confusing reaction that, while knowing things changed, not really knowing yet how they did.
That night I watched George W. Bush, updated my website via FTP on dial up, and never went to sleep. The coverage took over every channel. Every bit of life. Every thing. A few days later, Bush stepped on a heap of carnage in New York with a megaphone. The nation rallied behind war. And today we wonder how we stepped into the nightmare scenario of ISIS and Middle Eastern chess match madness.
It all began there.
It all happened when weather did NOT strike.
There is some strange coincidence in a way… as Hurricane Erin u-turned and paved the way for terror, the hijacked flights away from New York and Boston were also in the middle of u-turning as well.
The stage was set as Erin’s path towards the United States was halted because of a cold front…
I cannot fathom it being 14 years already since 9/11.. I have my personal memories, some I have shared in public settings, others I have kept very secret.. I have those images forever in my mind.. This morning while hearing news accounts of today’s ceremonies planned in the locations hit by terrorism on September 11, 2001, I realized this: The kids born that year, those who first were welcomed…
The theory behind this video: Predictive programming in BACK TO THE FUTURE.
The YOUTUBE video is well done, it gives us in depth coverage of Marty’s “Twin Pines” mall warnings about terrorists, and constant 9/11’s appearing in the movie.. of course numbers had to be inverted for that to be true.. There’s also the all seeing Illuminati eye.
The one part that got me a bit was the flames of the time traveling car looking like an 11 while a symbol for a fake store looked like a 9.
But for this video to be truly predictive programming screaming to viewers that a terrorist attack would occur on September 11 almost 20 years later, a lot of other things would have to be true, too.. Not to downplay those interesting numeric idiosyncrasies..
The filmmakers of BACK TO THE FUTURE would have had to be in the know. Robert Zemeckis, the writer and director, was apart of this conspiracy. So .. WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT. THE POLAR EXPRESS, and other BACK TO THE FUTURE films would have the same little Easter Eggs of predictive programming as well?
But that scene of the blazing 11 .. that one gets me. Not to say I buy into the full idea that Zemeckis wanted to warn us about something that would happen two decades later, but in hindsight lots of scenes are creepy. When pieced together..
But why didn’t anyone warn us of the 1993 attack. Or the bombing of the USS Cole. Or did they?
Included with that pop culture listing: BACK TO THE FUTURE…
We can believe what we want to. We can see what we need to.
Just use as much careful and concrete common sense you can muster up. Use discernment. See the forest from the trees..
And don’t stretch it.
Truth is weirder than fiction, of course..still don’t stretch the truth.
