The Buccaneer

Issue date: 5/13/09 Section: Campus Life

Media Credit: Courtesy of Bruce Hattendorf Linda Hattendorf, Director of "Cats of Mirikitani."

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers crumbled to the ground taking with them thousands of lives. In Port Angeles on 9/11, Bruce Hattendorf awaited word from his sister Linda and his friends in the financial industry.
Linda lives in New York and was shooting footage for her award winning documentary "The Cats of Mirikitani." The film follows Japanese American artist Jimmy Mirikitani, a homeless man who makes his living drawing.
When the planes hit the towers, Linda found Jimmy coughing in the toxic dust and invited him into her home.
Over the next six months, Linda not only shares a home with Jimmy, but learns about his escape from WWII, imprisonment in a U.S. interment camp and the loss of his American citizenship. Linda eventually helps Jimmy get his citizenship back and find a place to live. Mirikitani and Linda are still friends living and working in New York City.
"9/11 was very dreamlike and frustrating for me. I wasn't as worried about my sister as I was about friends because I knew Linda wouldn't have been in the towers," Hattendorf said. Fortunately, all of his friends survived.
One friend in Brooklyn was out campaining for a local election when paper started falling from the sky. He picked one up and saw they were financial records. That's when he realized something had happened, Bruce said.
Hattendorf has mixed reactions to the tragedy. "First, I was mad at myself for not being there. Then I got a little frustrated with people here and elsewhere in the country who wanted to make it their tragedy. But to me it was a tragedy that happened in a neighborhood where I used to work and not far from where my sister lived," Bruce said.

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