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Asian American Voices on September 11, is a series of exclusive interviews of survivors, witnesses, families and community members produced by AsianConnections.

AsianConnections' Lia Chang interviews Sunny Kim, executive director of the non-profit inner city youth organization, Asian Professional Extension, Inc. (APEX). APEX's offices are located near the World Trade Center, at 120 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan.

I was on the subway. It must have been about 9:30 at that time. I was on the number 2 line and it kept stopping. It got worse when we got closer to Chamber Street, the Brooklyn Bridge area. It kept stopping much longer than usual. They weren't telling us anything and honestly, just New Yorkers in general, whenever the train stops, everybody gets extremely frustrated because they are all looking at their watches wondering, "Am I going to be late for work? What's going on? Why aren't they telling us anything?"

We were all underground so we didn't know what was going on. But it was a little unusual because it was more often than what was considered normal.

Finally, we get to Wall Street. It's around ten o'clock. Usually at the Wall Street stop, there's hardly anybody in the subway station, but instead you see this mad rush of people leaving Wall Street which didn't make sense at all because it's usually the other way around.

You get outside and you hear all these fire sirens. I think that was when the first plane had hit. Or maybe it was the second plane. I was walking towards the Seaport and you see people rushing to get on the subway and rushing to get out of the area. And everyone is looking in the opposite direction and I'm just listening to my Discman. I'm thinking, oh well, New York City, there must be a fire somewhere. You turn around and all you see is smoke. You have no idea it's coming from the Twin Towers. And you just assume that one of the buildings is on fire, it's being taken care of. And that's the end of it.

I need to rush in and go to work. And there's actually a Starbucks right by my office and most of the time around that time, the lines are really long. There were no lines. I was the first person to get service. And I was thinking, "This is a good day for me."

I asked someone what was going on down here. And some guy told me, "Oh I just heard that the Pentagon got hit. They're saying that it's a terrorist threat."

I said, "No that's impossible." I get to work. I'm thinking it's just a normal day. I get a phone call from my sister. She says, "Do you know what just happened? The Twin Towers got hit. You need to get out of there. What are you going to do?"

I said, "I'm going to continue to work. I'm sure it's all under control. And are you absolutely sure it is a terrorist attack?' She says, "No, nothing's been confirmed. I just saw the building get hit with the plane. They think it was a passenger jet. Everything is just a possibility. Nothing's been confirmed."

Then Alex, my boss calls me and says, " Sunny, you need to get out of that area. What are you going to do?" I said, "I'm going to stay here."

All of a sudden, one of the other organizations that we share space with, one of their volunteers who was working in the Twin Towers, had just left after the first plane hit. He was in our office. He looked really pale and was recounting for us what had happened. At that time I realized something was going on. I wished we knew what was going on. Nobody knew what was going on down there. Nobody had a radio, nobody had a TV. I think if we had a TV and we saw what happened, there would be no question in my mind of getting out of that area. For me, we all thought that things were under control.

It was close to 10. The electricity just kind of shut down for a few seconds and then it came back on. Which was very weird. We all felt a rumble. I think that was when the first tower fell. That's when we were like, "It's time to get out."

The entire foundation seemed like it was going to cave in. We got an announcement in our building, "We need you to evacuate. The hallway downstairs is filled with smoke." And now I'm thinking how could that have happened in the span of ten minutes? They tell us to take the staircase. The entire hall is filled with smoke. People are not leaving. No one is telling us what to do. It's not like there were gas masks available at that time.

I thought, "There's no way I'm staying here. I don't care where I'm walking but I'm getting out of here."

People thought it was safer to stay inside. Which I think was worse. We go outside. All you see, all the way up Wall St is white smoke. It's very grainy. You see people covered in that white smoke. And they're running. And not until they got to the actual Seaport did they take a breath. And they're like, I don't believe what happened.

That's when people started collapsing on the floor. And breaking down in tears. No one knows what's going on. There's just a wave. It was an exodus of people just running away. That is exactly what it looked like. Cars that were in the parking lot were trying to get out of that area. There was mass traffic. Pedestrians were all over the streets. You kept seeing people running towards the Seaport covered in that white smoke. They didn't know what to do. They looked like complete zombies. The phones weren't working, nothing was working.

I'm walking under the Brooklyn Bridge, there are no cars there, and everyone's just walking out towards Brooklyn. And it wasn't until I actually reached 2nd St on 1st Avenue that a car had a radio on with the news. That's when I heard that the Pentagon and the Twin Towers had been hit by 3 passenger jets. I was in complete shock.

I didn't even know how to react. You wanted to talk to somebody about it. You wanted to talk to somebody that you knew. So you could share what was going on.

My dad has a store in K-town. So I walked over there. And he was like what are you doing here? And I said, "I just walked here from Wall St. It was pretty far. We had to go by the river and then walk west. The bridges and tunnels were closed. And I live in Jersey.

I am thinking, "How am I going to get home?" It wasn't until I got to my father's store and saw on his small mini TV, the Twin Towers. As I was walking uptown, as I hit Chinatown, from a distance, I looked for the actual towers, and realized what had really happened. I was in disbelief. I thought how could that have happened? Those towers are such a symbol of New York City. One of them was on the verge of collapsing. It took a long time. You definitely saw the fire.

We were thinking of ways to get home. All of the hotels were booked by that point. And we ended up waiting around. Worse come to worse, I would have walked all the way up to the George Washington bridge and walked across the bridge. I wanted to get home. I felt so abandoned. You needed to talk to somebody about what had just happened. I kept telling myself, stay calm. Wait until you are a little more settled. Don't overreact. Wait until you get home.

We waited for my sister who was working, as a social worker at a hospital. It was 5pm. It was the most torturous evening because we couldn't go back to Jersey. We had my dad's car and we had to go back to Jersey. We kept hearing the bridge was open, the bridge was closed. They wouldn't let us through. And then finally we heard on the thruway, which is so far from where we are, was open. People were actually going home that way. That was around 11 at night.

We finally got home. That was the longest trip. It was the worst traffic that I have ever been in. Cars were just waiting until the bridge was open. Every single time we got so close, the cops were directing and redirecting you to another route.

We finally got home. My sister's boyfriend was at a bar. My sister asked if I wanted to go for a drink. I get to the bar and that is when I started breaking down. Because that is where they had this big screen TV. My sister asked if I was okay and I said, "No, I've been keeping it in for 12 hours. It's been really difficult.

And then you go home and you are watching all these different stories. My first thought was that we have so many volunteers that work in the Twin Towers. How many are missing? I couldn't even get in touch with my volunteers until the next day.

At the same time, I didn't feel like talking to anybody either because they all knew that I was there during that time. I wasn't really dealing with it.

It wasn't until days later that I started thinking; I can't believe that I was there. To be so oblivious. To be such a New Yorker. New Yorkers are not fazed by anything. That's just part of living in New York City. It made me feel like I'm so cold, so jaded, so complacent. That bothered me. I feel like I can't live life like this anymore and I shouldn't be so jaded. People always say you can't smell roses in New York City. I feel like in the past thirty years I haven't stopped to appreciate life to say, "Wow, I'm so lucky." That was the worst experience.

To this day when I see stories it brings me back to the day when I was there. And how I kept thinking, "What's going on? It's just a fire."

Afterwards, I wanted to get back into the groove of my own life. I went back the next day to see if I could get into work. It wasn't until a week and half later when we were allowed back into our area. The first day -- the only train that was working at that time was the A/C/E line to Fulton St. I went down to that area.

It was awful. All the stores were covered with that white cloud. It stunk down there. Wall Street is such a clean and pristine area. It looked horrible. It made me sick to be around there. It was dead for months on end. Nobody ever came around that area again.

Related AsianConnections articles:
Amy Tan at Ground Zero by Ben Fong-Torres
An Interview with Officer David Lim by Suzanne Kai
Documenting a Community on the Brink by Lia Chang