On Monday, Americans remembered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, 22 years after Islamist hijackers took control of jetliners and slammed them into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

President Joe Biden was travelling to Alaska to wrap out a five-day tour to India and Vietnam, and he was scheduled to give comments in Anchorage.

Biden’s choice to host the event in Alaska rather than Washington or New York broke with presidential tradition.

Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials joined families of those who died on the two planes that hit the towers and on the ground at the 9/11 Memorial, which occupies the footprints of the downed building to remember the horrific day.

Across the Potomac River from Washington, Pentagon officials held the traditional event at the U.S. military’s headquarters.

The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people and prompted then-President George W. Bush to launch a “global war on terror” that included a military assault on Afghanistan to find al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden eluded capture until he was killed in a U.S. raid on his Pakistan compound in 2011 ordered by then-President Barack Obama.

The 9/11 attacks were the worst assault on U.S. soil since the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where 2,400 people were killed.