September 11th 2003: When Kanako Omae (17) and her mother Kyoko (44) left their apartment in Brooklyn, they watched clouds of smoke from Manhattan.
"Is it a big fire ?"
"I heard a peal of thunder last night."
But when they went grocery shopping, they heard many sirens of fire engines and police patrol cars. Soon after, they saw a television and realized that World Trade Center had disappeared. "I couldn't understand the situation, so I was stupefied at that time." It happened only 2 days after they started to live in NY.
　　　　
Kanako came to New York in order to be a drummer. When she was junior high school student, she was fascinated by Rock 'n Roll music, then she made a band with friends in high school and started to play drums.  She played the drums violently. She felt so uplifted by the beat, that she wanted to shout. That's when she knew that she wanted to practice drums seriously in the home of Rock 'n Roll. When she told her father her plans to quit high school and go to New York, Hirokazu, her father (47) was furiously opposed to the idea. The family talked about her request many times, and eventually he relented under the condition that she "live with her mother". Her mother, Kyoko, who managed a cramming school in Kanagawa prefecture, thought "Kanako should go to New York and pursue her dream instead of going to high school. So I decided to support her."
　　　　　　
Prior to 9/11, Kanako only wanted to pursue her dream of music, but terrorism showed Kanako "the hardness of real life". All of the music disappeared from the city. There were frightening rumors circulated endlessly like "there will be the bomb in a subway. There will be another terrorist attack in the near future." Kanako went to ground zero to pray for victims with crane origami. She felt so scared that she felt verbally paralyzed.

 
She could not find any band which would accept her. She looked for bands from classified sections of news papers , but all of the bands rejected her because she is Japanese and only 16 years old. Finally she was accepted by a band, but the bass player openly hated her. She came to understand how serious racial discrimination is. On the other hand, Kanako prayed and cheered for America when she watched many buildings displaying the Stars and Stripes. She read many books about philosophy and religion in the world in order to better understand her feelings of fear and learn a better way to pray. However despite all this she never thought of going back to Japan. She practiced harder and harder and she began to develop confidence that she can live in New York as musician. "I'm no longer interested in angry music. I want to be a "tender drummer"
By this time Kanako had transferred to new band and told me about her perspective on "tender drumming" on the phone.

Before experiencing, she was satisfied simply trying to enjoy herself. Now she wants people to listen to her "happy rock" and feel uplifted. She wants to send a happy message to people. On September 12th, 2002, she will have a benefit show. "I want to play for the people and I want them to be happy and want them to make a positive effort for tomorrow."

　

New York has accepted Kanako even at just 16 years old. Now she thinks that if she can make audience happy with her music, then she can be happy.

　

＊ Yomiuri News Paper is one of the biggest news paper in Japan. Circulation is 10,152,943 (Jan. 2003). It is the first in world.