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The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks are nearly a quarter of a century behind us. Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of the worst day in U.S. history, which is a bittersweet milestone that I don’t think enough people grasp the significance of. That is especially true with younger generations of Americans who have no memories of 9/11 and, increasingly, no understanding of how much those events shaped the current trajectory of the 21st century.

I wasn’t old enough to remember 9/11 itself as someone born toward the end of 1997, but I distinctly recall growing up in the 2000s with the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars as a constant backdrop of my childhood. With that said, I didn’t grasp the full context and significance of 9/11 until I seriously started studying international affairs much later. I eventually spent so much time researching the subject that I was able to write about 9/11 professionally for outlets like The Japan Times and bring attention to the lesser known aspects of it on social media.

It was with that background that I finally made an auspicious pilgrimage to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum yesterday, having booked a tour of the premises with my wife while we were visiting New York City this week. I would have gone today, but the area is largely closed to family members of victims for their own personal remembrance ceremony. Yet even on the day before 9/11, one immediately feels the weight of history in the air.

The main memorial site of two reflecting pools symbolizing where the Twin Towers once stood is easily the most peaceful location in New York City. Crashing sounds of water landing on the granite basins below create an aural effect that drowns out the noises of traffic and airplanes, while all those present know that they’re treading on sacred land. The 400 swamp white oak trees, native to New York, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, are planted throughout the grounds because they represent victims from all three locations of 9/11. Those are the kinds of careful details that went into the arduous process of creating this special place.

Here amid the hustle and bustle of the busiest metropolis on earth is a space dedicated entirely to solemn reflection. Every single victim’s name is written on the panels installed around the reflecting pools and grouped not by alphabetical order, but in careful consideration of the friends and colleagues they worked with every day in the towers. Those who were on board the hijacked planes, at the Pentagon, or even killed in the original 1993 World Trade Center bombing are also included. With their names physically carved out via hollow gaps in the metal, an endless supply of flowers and photographs from loved ones is always present.

The adjacent museum provides one of the most exhaustive overviews of 9/11 a person could ask for. It was set to close early in preparation of today’s memorial and the general admission line was completely packed with visitors, but we were able to gain instant access due to booking group tickets ahead of time. I’m glad things turned out this way because visiting will not be an experience I’ll easily forget. Despite knowing the general timeline of 9/11 pretty well at this point, little can really prepare you for how emotionally draining the exhibits are.

Everything from the largest steel beam to the smallest scrap of office paper is meticulously preserved and given a full explanation. You should plan to spend a full afternoon here due to the crowds, but also because there’s simply so much information to fully process. I was reminded of similar museums in Japan dedicated to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but this one goes into even more extensive detail. It’s heavy stuff that many will find difficult to come to terms with, but not facing the gravity of what happened is how history becomes forgotten.

Indeed, precisely how the history of 9/11 should be remembered is itself a central theme of the entire site. The memorial was not established until 2011, while the museum finally opened to the public in 2014. With thousands of people affected and the family members of the deceased being a powerful lobbying force, creating a place that properly honored everyone connected to 9/11 was no easy task. I walked away with the impression that they did as good of a job as could be expected.

In my time researching 9/11, I’ve come across horrible photographs of “jumpers” — the colloquial term for people forced to make the impossible decision to leap from the World Trade Center and receive an instant death or be burned alive in the smoldering flames where they stood. I’ve seen other disturbing images of severed human limbs on the streets below and Pentagon victims reduced to literal ash. With 9/11 having taken place in a pre-smartphone, pre-social media world, those with cameras were very selective in what they shot and the most unsettling media was often cut for broadcast on television or print in newspapers.

You won’t find any explicit pictures of gore at the 9/11 museum, but there was obviously no way such material would ever be widely shown to the public. I’m of mixed feelings around this choice because while I understand the need to keep things to a certain level out of taste, it comes close to whitewashing just how bad things truly were on that day. In the years after 9/11, we’ve certainly seen some misguided attempts to make it more “palatable” to Americans.

For quite some time there was this frustrating post-9/11 trend to remove any depictions of the Twin Towers in pop culture. Movies like The Bourne Identity and video games like Metal Gear Solid 2 had their plots significantly altered, which made some sense given the sociopolitical climate of the time. Far more unacceptable was censors feeling the need to airbrush any World Trade Center references out of media that already existed such as in Home Alone 2 and The Simpsons. Considering that al-Qaeda’s goal was to morally weaken Americans and break their spirits, there’s an irony that in some ways they got their wish with how taboo the Twin Towers became.

Thankfully, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum largely succeeds in striking a balance between proper historical documentation and conveying the gravity of what happened without needing to resort to provocative imagery. There’s a time and a place for more shocking photographs, but those are probably best left to online archives that can be freely accessed. For a public-facing site that’s primarily intended for general education, I doubt much could be done better. You can’t teach people if you scare them off.

The 9/11 Archive on Reddit is the definitive online source for all things 9/11. It is run by mods who are dedicated toward covering it from all possible angles, and their tireless efforts have allowed for “lost media” around the events to be saved. Many videos that were taken on that day remain in government possession, stuck on aging analog tapes, or have remained forgotten in private collections. Some material is locked away behind layers of legal tape, but much of it only needs to be found and properly digitized. In 2024, an hour of new World Trade Center collapse footage was posted online by a Japanese tourist who was in New York City on September 11, 2001, but he never publicly released it until 23 years later. Who knows what else is out there?

Still, we also need physical places like the 9/11 Memorial & Museum to preserve history more than ever now. The current digital landscape of fake news is causing many to doubt their very eyes whenever new photographs or videos are posted online. Conspiracy theories around 9/11 have always existed of course, but the rapid evolution of AI will only make separating fact from fiction all the more difficult in the years and decades to come. There will come a time around the end of the century when the public remembers 9/11 like the sinking of the Titanic — a devastating tragedy in its time, but a distant memory after all those who survived it are no longer around. “Never Forget” can only have real meaning if the record is made now.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is a mix of free and paid content. Certain columns such as these are free for all subscribers, but other articles will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

My grandmother was five years old when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Manchuria on Sept. 18, 1931. While the traditional start date of World War II is typically associated with Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, you really can trace the beginning of the overall global conflict to what was happening in Northeast Asia long before.

Hailing from Shenyang, my family lived under the Japanese occupation like millions of other Chinese. My grandmother’s father was the chauffeur for a high-ranking official, which gave her family a better living than most. She and her sister learned Japanese at a good school and even visited Tokyo during World War II to record music with the NHK Symphony Orchestra as a child singer. As all that was happening, my great-grandfather was apparently stealing gasoline to sell the black market. Somehow he didn’t get caught, and they were lucky enough to survive the war.

Emperor Hirohito’s official proclamation of surrender happened 80 years ago to this day on Aug. 15, 1945. The now defeated Japan would officially sign the official documents a few weeks later on Sept. 2, bringing an end to the bloodiest conflict in human history. My relatives were some of the lucky ones. Up to 20 million Chinese are estimated to have died in the conflict. Depending on the criteria used, the worldwide total deaths could have been as high as 75 million.

Grandmother lived to the ripe age of 96, passing away of COVID in 2022 surrounded by loved ones in the United States. She had not just survived World War II, but the Great Depression beforehand, the Cultural Revolution afterward, and practically all of the turbulent events that China went through in the middle of the 20th century. I had the privilege to hear her stories firsthand, which is something I will always be grateful for. When I look back on her life, the realization hits me that my generation will probably be the last to hold conscious memories of speaking to the World War II generation.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. Recent updates from 2024 reported that just about 66,100 WWII veterans were still alive in the United States out of the 16.4 million who participated in the conflict. The real number is assuredly lower now considering that about 131 die every week. It is unclear how many surviving vets there are worldwide, but the total number is somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000. I remember being in middle school when the last surviving American veteran of the First World War, Frank Buckles, passed away in 2011 at 110 years old. Florence Green, a British woman who was believed to be the last known service member of the entire conflict, followed in 2012.

As of this writing, Ilie Ciocan from Romania is the oldest living WWII veteran at the astounding age of 112. Considering that the youngest people who served are in their late 90s and the age patterns of veterans from WWI, we can probably expect the final WWII vets who achieve the greatest feats of maximum human longevity to pass away in the 2030s. The last men to tell their stories will be those who lied about their age to enlist or the ones from countries where teenagers were drafted to fight. Beyond soldiers, there are over 200,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust still alive. Many of them were children liberated from the camps. With their median age today being 87, a small portion will likely live into the 2040s or even 2050s. Regardless, 90% of all Holocaust survivors will pass away in the next 15 years.

Eight decades on from the end of WWII, we have reached a turning point when it comes to public memory and direct connections with the men and women who sacrificed everything to create the world we live in now. Those who participated in the war or are old enough to remember what life was like before, during, and immediately after it are literally a dying breed that will soon be gone forever. Being born in 1997 and growing up in the early 2000s, my default image of WWII vets for the longest time was people in their 70s and 80s. Elderly folks, but ones you felt would be around forever to offer pearls of wisdom and sage advice. The passage of time, unfortunately, does not work that way.

One should remember that this is a generation born when widespread radio was still a relatively new invention and the closest thing to a modern computer was a tabulating machine. After being raised on the economic struggles of the Great Depression, they were thrust into a world tearing itself apart through territorial invasions waged by empires, rapidly changing borders, mass slaughter, and eventually the invention of nuclear weapons. The sheer amount of people who were killed by the end of World War II is a staggering pile of corpses that hardly anyone today can comprehend. Those who lived through that era then witnessed the decades of profound historical and social shift which brought the 20th century into the 21st.

It would of course be ahistorical to idealize the WWII generation as uniquely better than those who came after them. They were human beings prone to the same follies and weaknesses which still exist today. The tyranny of the Nazis and the atrocities of the Holocaust were not solely due to Adolf Hitler, but the culmination of antisemitic attitudes and other social conditioning which had existed among Germans long before. Italian and Japanese fascism were similarly the result of destructive collectivist attitudes shared by enough people in their respective societies. Scholars have spent decades examining the underlying causes of WWII, but the era overall showed the best and worst parts of the human condition.

While many veterans on the Allied side have regaled the world with their stories, those on the Axis side are far less willing. For quite obvious reasons, German and Japanese veterans are reluctant to admit their part in being on the wrong side of a war which killed millions of people. Some were drafted and had simply had little choice, while others feel immense shame for being duped by their governments and the social climate around them at the time. Even so, what they have to say still matters. A recent piece published in The New York Times highlighted the rare perspectives of surviving Japanese veterans. None of the men interviewed glorified their time serving in the war and instead expressed hopes that future generations do not go down the same path.

My position as an American of Chinese descent living in Japan today would have certainly been unthinkable 80 years ago. This was a country that bombed Pearl Harbor and waged a completely unjustified war of aggression against its Asian neighbors, yet it is now a stalwart ally of the United States and among the best examples of liberal democracy in the world. No one in 1945 believed that Japan would be able to rise from the ashes of its utter destruction into the nation it is now, but it defied all the odds. As with modern Germany, that kind of transformation was not the result of happenstance. It could only have happened by learning from the mistakes of the past and actively wanting to build a better future.

When the last of the WWII generation departs from this world, we will only have the memories they leave behind in testimonies, photographs, and film. It is imperative that we preserve as much as possible before all of them fade into history. If you are fortunate enough to know anyone who served and they are still alive, treasure all the time you have with them. The experiences and stories they have to share will be invaluable long after they are gone.

Foreign Perspectives is a reader-supported Substack. If you like my work and have come this far, consider opting for a paid subscription so I can continue writing in-depth articles such as these on a regular basis. Your support is greatly appreciated!

Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

It may seem like just yesterday, but over two months have passed since Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to blows at the Oval Office. The explosive spat between what should have been stalwart allies was an embarrassing moment for the world to see and underscored the Trump administration’s frustrations with how to address the war in Ukraine. Well, most in Washington can probably agree at least that Vice President JD Vance should probably be kept as far away from Zelenskyy as possible.

This complete breakdown in communication was contrasted earlier late last month by a notably Vance-less meeting at Pope Francis’ funeral. While the 15-minute encounter was not pre-planned in advance, both men were photographed in deep conversation amid their solemn surroundings. As the next few weeks have shown, it seems that this got the ball rolling. Later reports suggested that Zelenskyy apparently was able to get Trump to admit that he may have to change his approach to Putin. Washington and Kyiv ultimately framed the talks as positive, which was likely a major factor in the long-awaited minerals deal finally being signed.

Vladimir Putin at the same time announced that there would be a unilateral three-day ceasefire beginning on May 8 to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II. Moscow’s supposed humanitarian generosity was unsurprisingly a sham. After all, the previous 30-hour “Easter truce” in April fizzled out as quickly as it started. Russia continued its launch of missiles on Ukrainian territory within the first six hours of that truce, according to Zelenskyy and even Trump himself issued a warning to Putin, curtly telling him to stop.

The next so-called ceasefire was just as meaningless. If Moscow was truly serious about ceasing hostilities, it would not have arbitrarily waited until May 8. Just days after Putin’s announcement, a Russian drone attack on May 1 killed one person and wounded 28 others in Zaporizhzhia. Fast forward to last week and Kyiv once again accused Moscow of violating the latest ceasefire. Make no mistake — the only reason Russia is even suggesting “ceasefires” is to make themselves look the party interested in peace and Ukraine the side that insists on continuing the bloodshed.

It is evident that Trump isn’t taking the bait — he most recently accused Putin of “tapping him along” and suggested that new actions such as sanctions may be in order. He re-affirmed this last week after a call with Zelenskyy, threatening more sanctions on Moscow if a full ceasefire was not implemented. The U.S. president has privately expressed his frustrations toward Russia “wanting the whole thing,” and even Vance is saying that Putin is “asking for too much.” Trump now finds himself at a crossroads of what to do with a conflict he previously boasted that he could end “in 24 hours.”

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Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

A UFC commentator, a comedian, and a war correspondent walk into a studio. It sounds like the setup to some joke with an esoteric punchline — but no, it’s just your average episode of The Joe Rogan Experience. My non-podcast listening, non-political junkie readers may be confused, but bear with me for a moment. I’ve discussed in previous columns just how important Joe Rogan’s podcast has become for American discourse. He’s spoken to everyone from Robert Downey Jr. to Edward Snowden.

With over 14.5 million followers on Spotify, it really cannot be overstated: Rogan is a big deal, and the guests he invites help shape the viewpoints of a vast number of people. His podcast with Donald Trump arguably played at least some last-minute role in the man returning to the White House. Yet to quote Uncle Ben, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In recent years, The Joe Rogan Experience has faced significant criticism for promoting conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and misinformation.

Some of this is overblown by mainstream media outlets who feel their influence is being threatened. But other moments — such as Australian radio presenter Josh Szeps making Rogan look foolish on camera about vaccines — highlight the limitations of the podcast. On topics like U.S. foreign policy and history, Rogan and some of his guests have repeated demonstrably false claims. Ukrainians have accused the show of pushing pro-Kremlin talking points, and recent controversy centered around Rogan inviting on Darryl Cooper — a podcaster with no real qualifications who engages in blatant historical revisionism, including downplaying Hitler’s public antisemitism and calling Winston Churchill “the chief villain of World War II.”

This long introduction is necessarily to contextualize an important episode of The Joe Rogan Experience posted last week. Over three hours of heated discussion, British journalist Douglas Murray and American comedian Dave Smith traded blows over the legitimacy of figures like Cooper, U.S. aid to Ukraine, and Israel’s war with Hamas. Their extreme disagreements reflect deepening fractures within the American political right — and suggest a stormy future is ahead.

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Foreign Perspectives is gradually shifting into more paid content. Certain columns such as Bonus Perspectives and A Bit of Film and War will remain free for all subscribers, but articles like these will be exclusive for paid subscribers. If you enjoy the work I do, please consider upgrading to a monthly or yearly subscription. Your support is greatly appreciated and ensures that this Substack can continue to deliver high quality pieces.

Here’s a first for Foreign Perspectives, a spur-of-the-moment column on a U.S. election. In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 24 hours, Donald Trump is now slated to be the 47th president of the United States and is only the second candidate in history to win two non-consecutive terms. Move over, Grover Cleveland. The one interesting factoid about your obscure presidencies is now irrelevant. Nice stache though.

Usually I reserve takes on political topics for my weekly column Bonus Perspectives, but there’s so much on my mind that I wanted to get out that I don’t think one segment in a four-part article would be enough. This deserves its own full piece, and while a lot will be said in the coming days, weeks, and even years, I thought it would be more important to get my initial thoughts out now while they’re still fresh.

Emotions are high on both sides, and I wanted to provide something a bit more nuanced from the unique perspective of an American living abroad who has watched this soap opera unfold for a long time. Many on the left are shocked that Trump could win again despite what we all know about him as a human being, but that only tells me that they’ve been living in a bubble for too long and need to get out of it.

I predicted that Trump would win a second term the moment that he announced his candidacy in 2022, but especially when Kamala Harris announced hers earlier this summer. You can read my column published in late July if you don’t believe me. Here’s what I wrote then:

I think Harris simply has too much against her with the general lack of enthusiasm for her campaign and the overall decline in Biden’s approval ratings. Even if neither of the options are good ones, Americans will historically choose change if they perceive the current party’s regime as ineffective. The real question is if Americans’ dissatisfaction with the establishment will outweigh dislike of Trump as it did in 2016. I don’t anticipate Trump to win in a landslide, but then again, neither did Nixon when he entered the White House in 1968.

Call me Nostradamus if you wish, but at the time I thought that these were rather trite observations. Even as someone who doesn’t reside in the United States anymore and has never had to live under the Biden administration, I could tell that most Americans, or at least enough of them for it to count at the ballot box, were not happy with how things were going. One of the most notable issues this election cycle was the rising costs of groceries. Even though actual prices have leveled off, they still feel high to most American consumers and simply trying to put food on the table is a far more expensive ordeal now than it was five years ago.

Is that directly Biden’s fault and can the president really change the prices of groceries? Probably not, but economic insecurity, real or perceived, is one the biggest reasons for political power shifting to a rival party in most democracies. Economists I greatly respect like my friend Noah Smith have made logical cases for why Biden was actually a good president, but hard numbers and data unfortunately don’t matter to a Pennsylvanian coal miner who needs to feed his family. Harris was largely perceived as being a continuation of Biden, which as the incoming popular vote numbers are currently showing, isn’t what the majority of the country wanted.

The votes are still coming in as of this writing, but Trump took in over 5 million votes more than Harris. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, Harris won roughly 14 million less votes than Joe Biden received in 2020. A Republican hasn’t won the popular vote in a U.S. presidential election since George W. Bush in 2004. That can probably be accounted for the post-9/11 high the country was feeling toward his administration, and even that was on its way out by then.

Something changed for this to have happened again after 20 years, and the only logical conclusion is that enough Americans are dissatisfied with the Democrat establishment. What the Biden administration especially represented as a tired system that was not working finally lead to such a major nationwide shift. As I predicted, Trump did not win in a landslide (see here for actual examples of one), but if I was wrong about one thing, it’s that I underestimated how much of the popular vote he would win. Harris didn’t even come close.

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