Six Killed; Poisonous Gas Paralyzes Tokyo Transit System In Mass Attack

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

March 20, 1995

This article describes a poisonous gas attack in a Tokyo subway train, one of several in a series of mass attacks that terrorized Japan in 1995. Because this article was written at the time the event occurred, it may contain information that has been subsequently revised or updated.

Tokyo—Mysterious poisonous fumes overwhelmed thousands of rush-hour subway commuters this morning in Tokyo.

The fumes killed at least six people, sickened thousands and paralyzed the city's transportation system. At least 16 people were unconscious and in critical condition.

A government spokesman, Kozo Igarashi, called the poisonings a "random mass attack," and Japan's Kyodo News Service said police were treating the case as a murder investigation.

Two main subway lines were shut down and 26 stations were closed, said Yasuo Nishijima, a subway spokesman.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Fire Department said the first report came from Tsukiji station in central Tokyo shortly after 8 a.m. (5 p.m. Sunday, St. Louis time). Passengers reported that a man in his 40s placed a lunch box wrapped in newspaper on an overhead rack inside a subway car and then got off. Shortly afterward, passengers began coughing and complaining of headaches, blurred vision and nausea.

A station employee, Shinichi Sato, 44, said co-worker Kazumasa Takahashi, 50, went into one of the train cars at Kasumigaseki as people were fleeing.

Takahashi removed a plastic bag with some of the poison in it and carried it to the station office. He died soon after, Sato said.

Kyodo News Service reported that a bottle wrapped in newspaper also had been found inside a subway car, raising suspicions that the perpetrator left gas bombs in several places.

"The smell of the gas was very strong," said Yoshio Kakurai, the station chief at Tsukiji. He described the odor as acidic.

Kakurai said that when the affected train pulled in, "the people all came bursting out." Some immediately collapsed on the platform, and others staggered out to the street.

At a string of stations along Tokyo's Hibiya subway line, rescue workers hauled passengers out into ambulances. Crews wearing gas masks and protective suits rushed into stations.

Japanese news broadcasts showed morning commuters collapsed on sidewalks, their faces contorted in pain as they loosened their neckties and mopped sweat from their brows.

Rescue workers administered CPR to prostrate passengers, while others scurried to transport the injured by ambulance to nearby hospitals.

Police first identified the toxic material as acetronitrile, a colorless liquid used in the synthesis of organic materials. The NHK TV station also reported that the material might have included sarin, a highly toxic nerve gas that killed seven people in the prefecture of Nagano last year. Police later said sarin could have been mixed with acetronitrile.

Indiscriminate Murder

Chief Cabinet Secretary Kozo Kgarashi said, "Such actions against innocent people are completely detestable and an indiscriminate murder, an atrocity.

"Although the exact cause of the incident has not been confirmed, it seems it was neither an independent act by an abnormal person nor a simple accident."

He said Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama had ordered a major rescue and relief effort.

A spokesman for the Teito Rapid Transit Authority, operators of Tokyo's main subway network, said, "One of our employees was killed, and we are checking how many others were injured."

Earlier This Month

A similar poisoning occurred earlier this month on a train on the Keihin Kyuko line headed from Yokohama to Tokyo. In that incident, a colorless gas filled the train shortly after midnight and overwhelmed 19 people who complained of headaches, blurred vision and nausea. Eleven people were sent to hospitals.

Sarin was involved in a mysterious leak last year that killed seven people in the central town of Matsumoto. Sarin, one droplet of which can kill a human, was developed by Nazi scientists in the 1930s; it is not normally available in Japan.