Just as Americans alive during the Pearl Harbor attack or the Kennedy assassination will never forget where they were when they heard the news, so the present generation will never forget the moment they heard terrorists attacked the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon.

Oliver Stone’s long-awaited “World Trade Center” opened nationwide Wednesday a month short of the fifth anniversary of the day that nearly 3,000 innocent people died at the hands of Islamic extremists.

There was just a handful of us viewers for the 1 p.m. showing of the film at the Regal Madison Square 12. I circulated among the moviegoers before the film and asked them to meet with me afterward so we could discuss their reactions. I wanted to hear their remembrances of 9/11 as much as I wanted to know what they thought of the film because few events in our nation’s history drew Americans together more than did the attacks.

I read one review of the film over the weekend in which the reviewer praised the overall quality of the film and director Stone for accuracy, but said he didn’t offer any enlightenment on terrorism.

I do not believe that was the scope of the film. Five years have passed since terrorists slammed hijacked airliners into the twin towers and Pentagon and we still do not know a lot more about terrorism. Stone’s film is a tribute to the brave would-be rescuers who rushed into the burning towers to save unknown victims and were themselves buried in the collapse.

His story centers on Port Authority Police Sgt. John McLoughlin, played by Nicholas Cage, and Officer Will Jimeno, played by Michael Pena. Maggie Gyllenhaal and Maria Bello appear as the officers’ wives.

McLoughlin led a team of five Port Authority officers into the concourse between the two towers just before the south tower collapsed. McLoughlin, Jimeno and Dominick Pezzulo survived the first towers’ collapse. Pezzulo was later killed when the second tower collapsed. After 22 hours, McLoughlin was one of the last of 20 people to be pulled from the towers alive.

The action switches between the officers’ distraught families and Cage and Pena, seriously injured and trapped under 20 feet of debris with just their ash-covered faces showing. Moviegoers know from the onset that the pair will eventually be rescued, but the claustrophobic tension created by the two talking to keep each other awake is gripping.

McLoughlin, who subsequently underwent 27 surgeries to repair his injuries, is quoted as saying the 343 rescue workers who died that day rushed into the burning towers “because it was the right to do.”

Although there were just nine people in the theater Wednesday for the early showing and some of them did not wish to comment, all who did said that they felt “World Trade Center” was a valuable, well-done film. Just as the film showed vignettes of reactions from across the nation and world to the news of the attacks, it seemed important to me to know these people’s remembrances.

One of those, Steve Byers, 58, of Huntsville, said that he was at home working on his job as a consultant to defense contractors on Sept. 11, 2001, when he heard the news of the terrorist attacks. Byers said he thought the U.S.’s military response was “correct at the time, but has lost focus.”

Lynda Ferguson, 37, of Harvest was working in accounts payable that day in Columbus, Ohio. She said she went home and “called my family, called my friends, and cried. And I couldn’t stop crying for months after every time I saw the footage.”

Jimmy Fields, 46, of Madison was in Athens Wal-Mart and as he left the store he tuned in his radio to listen to “Sports Talk” and heard of the attacks. “My initial reaction was that a commuter plane had accidentally hit the first tower, but then, knowing what had happened to the World Trade Center in 1993, it had to happen again.” He called his wife, Janet, who was sleeping late, and told her to get up and turn on the TV.

Janet Fields, 39, said she also thought it was an accident. “Then the second tower was hit and I knew it was much more, that it was an act of terrorism. My husband and I kept calling each other back and forth, and then the Pentagon was hit, and then the plane went down in Pennsylvania. I called him and he said he just couldn’t believe it.”

Darrell Jones, 63, was two years away from retirement at a Marine Corps Supply Center in Barstow, Calif. “After people realized it was a terrorist attack, everything went into heightened security.”

Jones’ wife, Judy, 57, was at home in bed, with California being three hours behind the East Coast. “My son was watching television and told me. I was just getting up and until the second plane hit, I didn’t know. By then, there was no question it was terrorism. I thought, ‘This is like Pearl Harbor.’ I thought we would be in a big war.”

Like Judy Jones, I also was a child of the Cold War who practiced covering my head under my school desk in the 1950s in case of nuclear attack . On 9/11, my sister, Helen, and I were traveling with a tour group in Switzerland. We had just checked into the Hotel de la Paix—the Hotel of Peace—in Lausanne when I called home and learned of the attacks.

I phoned my sister’s room and told her to turn on CNN. A few minutes later there was a soft knock on the door. I opened it to my sister. She made no move to come into my room, but we stood for moments looking silently into each other’s eyes.

Finally, she said, “I will have to say I have lived a good life, but I am sorry for the young ones.”

Later that night, a retired minister in our tour group led us in prayer and we all joined hands and sang “Amazing Grace.”