Abstract
During the rush hour commute on the morning of March 20, 1995, members of a Japanese religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo, released sarin, a deadly chemical nerve agent, in five subway trains on the Tokyo subway system. The attacks killed twelve people and injured more than a thousand, about a hundred of whom were seriously affected. In today’s era of the 24-hour news channel cycle, it is easy to forget that the 1995 sarin attacks pre-dated the saturation media coverage that would have dissected every aspect of this terrorism incident. Most Americans may have seen a brief segment on the nightly news, while others may have read descriptions of the chaos the following morning: “Subway entrances soon looked like battlefields, as injured commuters lay gasping on the ground, some of them with blood gushing from their nose or mouth. Army troops from a chemical warfare unit rushed to the scene with special vehicles to clean the air and men in gas masks and clothes resembling space suits, probed for clues.” 1
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Notes
Mirentxu Arrivillaga and Patrick Delaney, “The Subway Sarin Gas Attack—a Historical Perspective,” Joint Center for Operational Analysis Journal, vol. XI (Winter 2008/2009), pp. 8–9; and “Sarin Victims Feel Swept under a Rug,” The Japan Times. Most newspaper accounts from the time report that the subway lines ran until approximately 8:45 a.m.; for an exception in the secondary literature, see Robin Pangi, “Consequence Management in the 1995 Sarin Attacks on the Japanese Subway System,” BCSIA Discussion Paper 2002–4, ESPD Discussion Paper ESDP-2002–01, JFK School of Government, Harvard University, February 2002, p. 13.
Amy Smithson and Leslie-Anne Levy, Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the U.S. Response, Report No. 35 (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, October 2000), p. 1.
See, generally, David Kaplan, “Aum Shinrikyo,” in Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons, ed. Jonathan Tucker (Cambridge, MA: 2000), pp. 207–226.
Kenichiro Taneda, “The Sarin Nerve Gas Attack on the Tokyo Subway System: Hospital Response to Mass Casualties and Psychological Issues in Hospital Planning,” Traumatology, vol. 11, June 2005, pp. 75–85.
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© 2013 Jeffrey A. Larsen
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Mahan, E.R. (2013). Terror on the Tokyo Subway: Aum Shinrikyo and WMD Consequence Management. In: Larsen, J.A. (eds) Responding to Catastrophic Events. Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336439_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137336439_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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