page_title: Tokyo subway sarin attack
section_title: Chiyoda Line
hierarchical_section_title: Tokyo subway sarin attack / Attack / Chiyoda Line
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a timeline of events that happened on the Chiyoda Line in the Tokyo sarin attack in 1995
context_page_description: The Tokyo subway sarin attack was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on 20 March 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the Tokyo Metro during rush hour, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50, and causing temporary vision problems for nearly 1,000 others. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatachō, where the Diet is headquartered in Tokyo.
  The group, led by Shoko Asahara, had already carried out several assassinations and terrorist attacks using sarin, including the Matsumoto sarin attack nine months earlier. They had also produced several other nerve agents, including VX, and attempted to produce botulinum toxin and had perpetrated several failed acts of bioterrorism. Asahara had been made aware of a police raid scheduled for March 22 and had planned the Tokyo subway attack in order to hinder police investigations into the cult and perhaps spark the apocalypse they believed in. The leader also wanted to start a Third World War.
  In the raid following the attack, police arrested many senior members of the cult.
context_section_description: The team of Ikuo Hayashi and Tomomitsu Niimi were assigned to drop and puncture two sarin packets on the Chiyoda Line. Hayashi was the perpetrator and Niimi was his getaway driver. On the way to Sendagi Station, Niimi purchased newspapers to wrap the sarin packets in—the Japan Communist Party's Akahata and the Sōka Gakkai's Seikyo Shimbun.
  Hayashi eventually chose to use Akahata. Wearing a surgical mask commonly worn by the Japanese during cold and flu season, Hayashi boarded the first car of southwest-bound 07:48 Chiyoda Line train number A725K. As the train approached Shin-Ochanomizu Station, the central business district in Chiyoda, he punctured one of his two bags of sarin, leaving the other untouched, and exited the train at Shin-Ochanomizu.
  The train proceeded down the line with the punctured bag of sarin leaking until 4 stops later at Kasumigaseki Station. There, the bags were removed and eventually disposed of by station attendants, of whom two died. The train continued on to the next station where it was completely stopped, evacuated and cleaned.
caption: Detailed map of the attack on the Yoyogi-Uehara bound Chiyoda Line train.
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