Victims of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult’s sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system were remembered Friday, which marked 31 years since the incident that left 14 people dead and more than 6,000 injured.
A flower stand was set up at Kasumigaseki Station, one of the attack sites. Shizue Takahashi, 79, who lost her husband in the attack, and others mourned the victims there.
At 8:10 a.m., close to the time of the attack, 16 station staff members offered a silent prayer. Takahashi arrived at the place at around 10 a.m. and laid flowers.
“I can’t stop feeling angry because (Aum Shinrikyo) successor organizations continue to exist under new names,” she said. “I want to warn people who don’t know about the incident.”
On March 20, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo members sprayed sarin in train cars on Tokyo Metro’s Hibiya, Marunouchi and Chiyoda lines. At Kasumigaseki Station, a stop for all three lines, Takahashi’s husband, Kazumasa, then 50, who was deputy head of the station, and Tsuneo Hishinuma, then 51, who was deputy head of the Yoyogi train district, were killed.
Over a series of crimes committed by Aum Shinrikyo, including the sarin attack, 13 people were executed in July 2018, including former leader Chizuo Matsumoto, 63.
Since March 2023, the government’s Public Security Examination Commission has been implementing recurrence prevention measures to restrict the activities of major successor organization Aleph, on the grounds that the group failed to fulfill its reporting obligation under the law to control organizations that committed indiscriminate mass murder.
AloJapan.com