Underground (33 page)

I commute to work on the Hibiya Line. It’s incredibly crowded, especially at Kita-senju Station, where lots of people transfer and they’ve been doing all these repairs that have cut into the platform space—it’s really dangerous. One little push and you could easily fall onto the tracks.

When I say it’s crowded, I was boarding a train once when my briefcase got swallowed up in the torrent of people and swept away. I was holding on, trying not to let go, but I just had to or my arm would have broken. The case just disappeared. I thought I’d never
see it again
(laughs)
. I had to wait until the crowd thinned out to find it. At least there’s air-conditioning now. Summers were just unbearable in the past.

Some people get off at Akihabara, so finally there’s a little breathing space. At Kodemmacho, there are no longer people rubbing up against you, and at Kayabacho you might even find a seat. On past Ginza, there’s room to read a magazine.

My wife and I have a daughter, four years old. We’ve been married five years. We rent our house. It’s where my family lived when I was small, but while I was still in school my parents and brother all died one after the other, so I’m the only one left. Now I have my own family and we’ve taken the place on. It’s in a residential area, a little on the small side, but there are all the modern conveniences.

I originally wanted to be in music. I was in a college band, and for three years after that, too. Strictly amateur, mostly techno stuff. I didn’t even have space to set up my instruments.

Once out of college I became a typical salaryman. But that just wasn’t me. I barely survived the office environment. I was working for a computer company, but I hated it. The work kept me very busy. Hardly any time off. It was going nowhere, so I resigned after a year and a half.

Then after a while I got a job with an audiovisual company, which went bust after a few years, so I formed my own company. I never really wanted to be self-employed, but it proved necessary for tax reasons. There were three of us at its peak, but as the economy worsened less work came in, and for the last year it was just me.

March 20 was a Monday. I had an appointment with my boss, so I went to work early. If I’d waited a few trains at Kita-senju, I might have gotten a seat, but I’d have lost fifteen minutes, so I hurried onto the first train that came. Sit or stand, you’re still packed in face-to-face, so sitting’s not all that comfortable anyway. That day, the train was packed. Monday mornings are the worst.

I always take the fourth car from the front, by the rear door. The time is fixed, so it’s generally familiar faces, but that day it was a different train, so I didn’t know anyone. I remember that impression, of how things were a little different.

There was absolutely no chance of getting a seat until Tsukiji.
That was unusual. I can usually get a seat around Kayabacho … So anyway I finally got a seat, when there came an announcement, “One passenger has collapsed. The train will make a temporary first-aid stop at this station.” I sat and waited, but then after about two minutes the message changed to “Three passengers have collapsed.”

Out on the platform there was this wall of people. It was all happening in the next car where the packet of sarin was. What’s going on? I wondered and stuck my head out the door, but I couldn’t see what was wrong. Then a middle-aged man came walking from that direction saying, “Sarin! Sarin!” I distinctly remember him saying, “sarin,” but he sounded drunk.

Hearing that, several people around me stood up, though they didn’t seem in any particular hurry. They weren’t running to escape or anything.

A little while after that there was another announcement: “Poison gas has been detected. It is dangerous underground. Please head for safety above ground.” At that all the passengers stood up and got off the train, but still there wasn’t any panic. They walked a little faster than normal, but there was no pushing or anything. Some put handkerchiefs to their mouths or were coughing, but that’s all.

The wind was blowing through the station from the back toward the head of the train. Which is why I thought, “I’m all right, the trouble’s in the next car up, upwind from here.” And the way out was also upwind, toward the exit at the back of the train. Meanwhile, I felt a strange tickle in my throat. You know when the dentist gives you anesthetic and it’s seeping back into your throat? Just like that. To be honest, I was scared. The realization that I might be gassed to death suddenly hit me. If it was sarin, it was serious. I saw what it did in Matsumoto; you breathed it in and you died.

I went out the exit and up the stairs. Outside, I wanted to have a cigarette, but I could barely draw air into my throat before I was coughing hard. That’s when I knew I’d breathed the gas. “I’d better call the office,” I thought. There were two phone booths outside the station, but both had long lines. I had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes for my turn. It was still before office hours, but I told the girl who answered: “There’s been some terrorist activity. I’m going to be late.”

After I finished my call, I looked around and saw that there were lots of people crouching on the ground, dozens of them. Some looked unconscious, some had been carried up the stairs. Before I’d made my call there had only been a few, but in only fifteen or twenty minutes the place was in an uproar, though not yet the war-zone atmosphere they showed on TV.

This detective person was walking around asking out loud, “Did anyone see the culprit who planted the poison gas?” Then straightaway an ambulance arrived.

They still hadn’t sealed off the entrance to the subway and quite a few people were going down for a look. I was thinking, “That can’t be safe.” But eventually I remember a station attendant appeared and shut the entrance.

I knew I’d inhaled poison gas, so I was concerned, but I didn’t know whether to leave the area or not. It’d be better if I got tested, right? It’s only asking for trouble to avoid the issue and take another train to work, then collapse midway.

On second thought, though, I could still walk—unlike the ones they carried up—so that must mean I wasn’t in such a bad way. When the first-aid team came and said, “Everyone who’s feeling ill, please get in the ambulance,” I didn’t. I thought I was okay.

So I walked to Shintomicho Station and took the Yurakucho Line to get to work. When I got there, the executive director contacted me to ask if I was all right. I explained the situation, and he told me, “They’re saying it was sarin, so you’d better get to a hospital quick and have some tests.”

The hospital was nearby. Actually, things had started to look dim the moment I’d entered the subway at Shintomicho, but at the time I thought it was because of the brightness of the sun outside. I later learned it was due to the sarin. The tickle in my throat was almost gone; I could smoke. Anyway, I wanted them to test me.

But they told me, “We can’t test for sarin here.” The doctors can’t have been watching the news. They had absolutely no idea what had happened. This was around
10:30
. Naturally they’d never tested for sarin before and had no idea how to go about it. After making me wait for an hour while they looked it up, they told me, “Well, it’s like a pesticide, so the thing to do is drink a lot of water and flush
it out of your system. But for now you’re okay.” All right, I’m okay for now, I thought, and went to the reception area to pay the bill. Then a nurse who’d been watching television came and told me, “We can’t treat for sarin here. The TV said they can do a full treatment at St. Luke’s Hospital. Over there they’ve got the medicines and they can run a proper test. You’d better go check with the police.”

I was still unsure, so I went to the police post in front of the hospital and asked the officer there to tell me which hospital to go to for sarin testing. He must have thought I was a serious case and immediately called an ambulance. They took me straightaway to a hospital about twenty minutes away.

As I was a “serious case,” three doctors were waiting for me. I was so, embarrassed I had only light symptoms. “You’re not so bad. If no further irregularities show up today, then you’re all right,” they told me. No drip, no drugs.

So I was right back into the swing of things. My pupils weren’t badly contracted—I scarcely remember how long the condition lasted.

After the gas attack the police somehow became convinced I was one of the culprits. Two detectives came to my home and gave me a grilling. One of them looked me in the eyes and said: “Have you always worn your hair like that?” After I went over the events of that whole day, they showed me two likenesses, one of which looked quite like me. “During the gas attack, did you happen to see anyone like either of these?” No, I answered, I hadn’t, but I really felt they suspected me. According to these detectives, there was a high probability that the culprits had been contaminated themselves and had gone to a hospital for treatment.

Two or three weeks later the phone rang: “Mr. Makita?” came this voice. “Yes?” “Police. We take it you’re back home now.” It seems they wanted to obtain a statement, so I was to report to the precinct. It occurred to me that I’d been under surveillance, probably tailed. They still hadn’t positively linked the thing to Aum and everyone was on edge.

More than any anger toward Aum, I feel disgust. I despise people who turn a blind eye to the dangers of that kind of religion. I especially dislike the ones who try to recruit new people to their organization.

When I was in college, in the course of only three years, I lost my parents and my younger brother. Father had been in and out of hospitals, so it was no great shock when he died. But my mother had a heart murmur and was going in for observation, then died two days later. They hadn’t even operated. I was totally floored. No one had even imagined she might die. Then my brother died in an accident. By that point I couldn’t help thinking, “People can die at any moment.” I almost felt as if it were my turn next.

I just slept and slept. Twelve hours at a strech. Sleep that long and your sleep becomes very shallow. I dreamed a lot.

Around that time, I was approached by one of these new religions. This recruitment type came on to me, saying, “That kind of misfortune just keeps repeating, so you had better change your fate here and now. Shouldn’t you accept a faith … ?” Truly tasteless as far as I was concerned. Maybe that’s why I’m so down on religion.

I am a circulatory specialist with Internal Medicine Ward 2. Hence my duties at the Emergency Care Center mainly concern arterial valve and heart irregularites. The center here has brought together a rather special team of veteran doctors from several different hospital departments. There are some twenty doctors in total, working in twenty-four-hour shifts.

The day before the gas attack, I was on supervisor duty, responsible for overseeing the running of the hospital. Sunday supervisor duty runs from nine to nine, Sunday morning to Monday morning. During the daytime I’m generally in the ward examining patients.

That morning I was in the doctors’ lounge watching TV with a cup of instant ramen for breakfast. The first reports came in about
8:15
: “Poison gas at Kasumigaseki Station. Heavy casualties.” “What’s this?” I thought. The very first thing that came to mind was poison gas—cyanide or sarin.

MURAKAMI:
So city gas pipes or any other possible gases simply did not occur to you?

It’s unlikely inside a subway station. From the very first, I thought there probably had to be a criminal involvement. Already with the Matsumoto incident there had been talk that just maybe it was Aum, so almost automatically it all clicked: “Poison gas—crime—Aum—sarin or cyanide.”

It was likely the victims would be brought to our hospital, so I thought we had better be prepared to deal with either cyanide or sarin. Actually, for cyanide poisoning we always keep a treatment kit to hand. For sarin, however, there are two remedies—atropine and 2-Pam—both of which we’ve used before.
^*

Actually, up until the Matsumoto incident I knew virtually nothing about sarin. There was no need for me to be up on such a specialist military weapon. But with Matsumoto, there were symptoms like low blood cholinesterase and visible contraction of the pupils, enough to make us doctors think it must be due to some kind of organophosphate.