Americans are remembering the tragedy and legacy of 9/11 as the US marks 22 years since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Somerset County, Pennsylvania, killed nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more.
Services will be held at firehouses, city halls, military bases and elsewhere to commemorate one of the deadliest attacks in U.S. history.
The hijacked plane attacks shocked the country and heightened domestic fears.
President Joe Biden, returning from a trip to Vietnam and India, will mark the day at a ceremony at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska.
At the main site of the tragedy, Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to attend a ceremony at Ground Zero at the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum Plaza in New York. Loved ones of those lost will participate in an hour-long recitation of the victims’ names.
James Giaccone said he will read his brother’s name again this year. Joseph Giaccone was 43 years old when he died that fateful day.
“If their names are said out loud, they don’t disappear,” said James Giaccone. The Associated Press,
“I hope I never see the day when they reduce it to a minimum,” he said. “This is a day that changed history.”
According to the AP, President Biden will be the first president to mark 9/11 in Alaska or anywhere in the western US. Most presidents have commemorated the day from the site of the attack, while in recent years some have done so from the White House lawn.
First lady Jill Biden will lay a wreath at the memorial at the Pentagon on September 11.