The Tokyo subway sarin attack struck the morning rush hour
On this day · 20 March 1995
A doomsday cult released nerve agent on five rush-hour trains, turning Tokyo's busiest commute into a mass-casualty crime scene.
On the morning of March 20, 1995, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult boarded crowded trains on three of Tokyo’s busiest subway lines, the Marunouchi, Chiyoda, and Hibiya. Each carried plastic bags of liquid sarin, a nerve agent first developed as a chemical weapon, wrapped in newspaper. Around 8:00 a.m., at the peak of rush hour, they punctured the bags with sharpened umbrella tips and stepped off, leaving the poison to vaporize among the commuters.
The coordinated attack killed 13 people and left thousands needing medical care; police later logged more than 6,000 injury reports. Hundreds of victims suffered lasting eye, respiratory, and psychological effects studied for years afterward.
It remains the deadliest chemical-weapon attack on civilians in modern peacetime.
The assault exposed how an apocalyptic sect had quietly manufactured battlefield poisons in suburban Japan, and it reshaped how cities plan for chemical terror.
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