The September 11th attack
Reinforced glass may have saved ex-Hawai'i general

By James Gonser
Advertiser Leeward Bureau

Army Brig. Gen. Karl Eikenberry already knew about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center when the Boeing 757 slammed into the Pentagon below his third-floor office.

He had just received a briefing from one of the officers on his staff when terrorists crashed the jetliner into the building, killing an estimated 189 people.

"I was sitting in my office about 8 feet away from the window, and I heard a thunderous noise and a shock which felt like an earthquake — a real shaking of the building," said Eikenberry, the Defense Department's deputy director for strategy, plans and policy. "Looking outside the window I could only see a ball of flames."

Eikenberry, who until May served as assistant division commander for support for the 25th Infantry Division (Light) and U.S. Army, Hawai'i, said the plane actually passed under his office, killing people on the first and second floors.

He had heard about the terrorist attack in New York less than an hour earlier and guessed the Pentagon had been attacked, too.

"The only reason I think I'm here is because of that protective glass we have on the window called Mylar," Eikenberry said. "It withheld the shock and the enormous stress that had been put on it, at least initially. I didn't wait around to see how long it would hold."

Eikenberry quickly began looking for an escape route.

"Outside my office there was black smoke billowing in," he said. "I started in one direction down the hallway and the smoke was too dense. I came back the other direction, passing right over what was to be the collapse zone in the Pentagon."

As he moved through the smoky corridor, Eikenberry heard a cry for help from Linda Moore, a civilian secretary to a major general with an office on the floor.

"I ran up to her," Eikenberry said. "She pointed to the general's door and said, 'It's locked.' The bolt had somehow shut from the outside. ... I was able to kick the door down and get the general out."

Eikenberry credits Moore's courage in remaining at her position to help save the general as just one of the displays of heroism in the Pentagon that day.

"In the chaos of the smoke and flames, it was by no means certain that as people moved out, somebody would have noticed something like that," he said. "It is just very moving when I think of ... how fast people reacted, the civilians that had never been in something like this before, showing so much discipline."

Eikenberry said everyone in his office managed to escape before that section of the building gave way in a fiery collapse.

After the ordeal, Eikenberry sent e-mail messages to friends in Hawai'i, letting them know he was alive.

"When we started getting e-mails back from Hawai'i, it was very important in getting my spirits and my wife's spirits up," he said.

Eikenberry became familiar to many Hawai'i residents as the voice of the Army during often-heated community discussions concerning the use of Makua Valley on the Wai'anae Coast for military training, after live-fire training was suspended there in 1998.

"I was very happy to hear he made it," said William Aila, a member of community group Malama Makua, which has a lawsuit pending against the Army, seeking to force it to complete an environmental impact statement analysis of training in Makua Valley.

"We agreed to disagree on Makua, but we also respect Karl and all the other servicemen. We are all humans and we all bleed, and we all share compassion for one another."

Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Kalaeloa, Makaha), said although Makua is not forgotten, a national emergency transcends the issue.

"We can be viewed as opposites on an issue, but we are all (Americans)," Hanabusa said. "This tragedy brings that more to mind."

Eikenberry said he and the country now have a new mission.

"Our office was burned and destroyed but our spirits are intact," Eikenberry said.

"I think that this has changed me the same way it has changed our nation. We know there is a new type of threat that has now struck in its full. We've got a long campaign in front of our nation now to deal with that threat, and it is going to require time, purpose and some adjustment. Not only the military, but within our society. I think everyone knows that."

Reach James Gonser at jgonser@honoluluadvertiser.com or 988-1383.