Underground (5 page)

“You know which hospital?” the driver asked, but nobody had a clue. So I got in the front seat next to the driver and went along too, directing them to Hibiya Hospital, which is where we always sent people whenever they got ill at the station. A woman said, “Wave a red cloth or something from the window so they know it’s an emergency.” We didn’t have a red cloth, so she gave us her handkerchief. Not red, just an ordinary pattern. I sat in the front seat waving that handkerchief out the window all the way to the hospital.

This was around
9:00
, so traffic was pretty heavy. I was already so out of it, after all that time waiting for an ambulance that never came. I can’t even remember the driver’s face or the woman who gave me the handkerchief. No recollection at all. I was just gone. There was no time to think about what was going on. I do remember Ohori throwing up in the backseat. That I do remember.

The hospital wasn’t open when we arrived. We took Takahashi out of the van on the stretcher and I went to the reception desk. “We’ve got an emergency here,” I said, then went back outside and waited by Takahashi. He wasn’t moving at all. Ohori had crouched down, immobile. Still no one came out of the hospital. They must
have decided it wasn’t all that serious. After all, I must have looked confused and hadn’t given them any details. We just waited and waited and nobody came out.

So I went to Reception again, and raised my voice: “Please! Somebody come! This is serious!” Then a few people came out, saw Takahashi and Ohori’s condition, and rushed them inside. How long did it take? Two or three minutes.

Sawaguchi stayed at Reception while I went back to the station exit with the TV van driver. By then I’d calmed down a lot, or at least I was telling myself I had to calm down. I apologized to the driver for Ohori throwing up all over the seat, but he didn’t seem to mind. It was only then that I could manage even a simple conversation like that.

By then, I think they’d carried up Toyoda and Hishinuma, neither of them moving. They were trying to resuscitate them with oxygen masks and massaging their chests. Around them other staff and passengers were sitting down outside the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Nobody knew what on earth was going on.

Finally an ambulance arrived. My memory fails me here, but I seem to recall Toyoda and Hishinuma were taken away separately. Only one patient to an ambulance, so one of them had to be taken by car. They were the only ones to leave at that time. None of the others were as critical. By then, so many people had gathered around Exit A
II
: news crews, police, firemen—I remember the size of the crowd. The media were in full swing, mikes out, interviewing passengers and subway staff. They probably couldn’t get into the station anymore.

Once the scene was under control, I walked to the hospital. When I got to the lobby, the TV was on. It was the NHK
[Japan Broadcasting Corporation]
news. They were showing live reports from the gas attack. That’s when I learned Takahashi had died, from a running subtitle on-screen. “Ah,” I thought, “he didn’t make it. We were too late …” I can’t tell you how sad I was.

My own condition? Well, my pupils were contracted and everything looked dark. I was coughing a little, too. Nothing too serious. They put me on a drip, just in case. I got off lightly. Probably because I’d gone outside early on. Ohori was in the hospital for ages.

After the drip, I walked back to the station with a few of the staff. The Chiyoda Line trains weren’t stopping at Kasumigaseki Station, so we went to the Marunouchi Line office. What with this and that, it was evening before I finally got home. It had been a long, long day. I took off the next day and returned for round-the-clock duty on the twenty-second.

To be honest, my memories of the gas attack jump around. This or that detail I remember with burning clarity, but the rest is very sketchy. I was pretty wound up. Takahashi’s collapse and taking him to the hospital—those things I remember fairly well.

I wasn’t especially close to Takahashi. He was the assistant stationmaster and I’m only one of the younger staff—our positions were totally different. His son works for the subway, at another station, about the same age as me. I suppose that made us like father and son, though I never felt much age difference talking to Takahashi. He was never one to pull rank. He was the quiet type, everybody liked him. He was always polite to passengers, too.

The gas attack didn’t upset me to the point where I thought: “I can’t take it, I have to change jobs.” Not at all. I’ve been here since I first joined. Can’t compare it with others, but I really like it here.

I had a Toyota Hi-Ace van with
TV TOKYO
in big letters on the side. The staff members who come with me change all the time, but the van’s always the same, loaded and ready to go when a news item breaks. I generally work from
9:30
to
6:00
, but sometimes do overtime and get called out in the middle of the night.

You need real skill. It’s big trouble if the other stations beat you to the scene. A car will only go so fast, so it’s a matter of choosing the clearest route to get there a little faster, and that takes thought. In my spare time I’m always studying maps, memorizing routes. Ask me to go almost anywhere in the entire Tokyo region and I’ll know the way.

Some incident comes up every day. There’s never a day when nothing happens. I never get a break
(laughs)
.

On March 20 I was at the station from
8:30
. There are three of
us in the van: me; Ikida, the cameraman; and Maki, the video engineer. We were scheduled to shoot some stock footage of Ueda Hollow over in the Kabutocho financial district, but there was no hurry. I’d planned to drive to the Kamiyacho crossing, then out to Showa Avenue, but when we reached the intersection everything was in complete confusion. “What’s going on here?” I thought. So I slowed down, keeping my eyes peeled. “They’ll call us in on this one before we get over there,” said Ikida.

Then just before the Shimbashi Tunnel, right on cue, the call came from the station telling us to make tracks for the Kasumigaseki crossing, the big open area near all the ministries: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries … When we got there I could see three or four subway workers in green uniforms collapsed on the ground by the exit. Two or three were sprawled out, and some were crouching. This young station attendant’s shouting at the top of his voice: “Quick! Somebody call an ambulance!”

We were the first media on the scene. They were carrying people out on stretchers. Next to them was a policeman barking into his radio: “Get some ambulances here now!” But by that time St. Luke’s and other hospitals were already in a panic and no ambulances were coming that way. They were even using unmarked police cars to carry the victims, it was so bad. Everybody screaming their heads off. Ikeda was shooting the whole scene.

That’s when somebody—maybe one of the injured—spoke up: “How about instead of filming us, you help take one or two people to the hospital?” But we’re loaded with equipment and stuff. We can’t just run off. So me and the crew talk it over. “What the hell are we going to do?” “It’ll look bad if we don’t take them.” In the end, I said, “Okay, I’ll go.” I ran to the shouting station attendant and asked where it is I’m supposed to be going. “Take them to Hibiya Hospital,” he says. Which is strange, I thought at the time, because Toranomon Hospital’s the closest. But it turns out that Hibiya’s the one affiliated with the Subway Authority.

We unloaded all the equipment, just in case something came up, but the van hasn’t got a flashing red light, so the young station attendant sits in the front seat next to me, his hand out the window
waving a
red handkerchief
, and we’re off and heading for Hibiya Hospital. The red handkerchief was a loan from this young nurse at the scene. She told us to wave it to show we were an emergency vehicle. In the car we had Assistant Stationmaster Takahashi, who died, and another guy—don’t know his name—also a station attendant, 30-something, wasn’t as bad as Takahashi. He even managed to get in the van by himself. We laid them both flat out across the backseat. The young station attendant kept asking, “Takahashi, you all right?” That’s how I knew his name. But Takahashi was hardly conscious, he could barely groan in response.

Hibiya Hospital was near Shimbashi Station. A pretty big place. It only took about three minutes to get there … All that time the young station attendant had his hand out the window waving the handkerchief. We ran all the red lights; went the wrong way down one-way streets. The police saw us, but it was just: “Go ahead, quick!” We were desperate; I knew it was life-or-death.

But you know, the hospital wouldn’t let us in. This nurse comes running out, and even when we told her, “They’ve been gassed in Kasumigaseki Station,” she just said something about there being no doctor available. Abandoned us there on the pavement. How she could do that, I’ll never know.

The young station attendant went inside, practically in tears, to plead with the receptionist—“He’s going to die, you have to do something.” I went in with him. At that point Takahashi was still alive. His eyes were blinking. We lowered him out of the van and he lay on the pavement, the other guy crouching by the roadside. We were all just blown away, so angry the blood just rushed to our heads. There we were for ages—can’t really say how long—kicking our heels.

Then a little later a doctor comes out and they carry the two of them in on stretchers. The point is, they didn’t have the least grasp of the situation. There’d been no word to the hospital about any injured people heading their way, so they were in the dark. Couldn’t cope. It was
9:30
by then, over an hour since the gas attack. And yet the hospital didn’t know what had happened. We must have been the first there with victims from the attack. They didn’t have a clue.

It was pitiful to see the young station attendant watching his colleague, his superior, not knowing if he was going to pull through or
not. In desperation he kept repeating, “Examine him, hurry, hurry!” And me, I was so worried, I stood around in front of the hospital for an hour or more, but I heard nothing, so I returned to the scene. I never went back to Hibiya Hospital and never saw that young station attendant again. That night I learned Takahashi had died, which made me so sad. To think that someone you’d transported didn’t make it.

Anger toward the Aum cult? No, it goes beyond anger. But who are they kidding? They say they just did what Asahara told them to, but they’re the ones who did it, so they should stand trial fully prepared to die.

I’ve been to the Aum headquarters’ Kamikuishiki Village lots of times on the job. Most of the cultists there, they look spaced out, like their souls have been sucked away. They don’t even laugh or cry. Like Noh masks, expressionless. I suppose you’d call it mind control. But not the Central Command. They’ve got expressions, they’re thinking. They haven’t undergone any mind control. They gave the orders. They joined forces with Asahara in that Universal State of theirs. Whatever they plead, there’s no excuse. Why not give them all the death penalty?

When you’ve worked as long as I have, you get to see all kinds of scenes. I even went to the Kobe earthquake. But the Tokyo gas attack was different. That was really and truly hell. Okay, so there were lots of problems with how it was reported, but the people interviewed knew what a nightmare it was.