months … Now I develop in-house software. There are 150 people in our department alone—more men than women.
The day of the gas attack fell between holidays, so only about half the staff showed up for work, but I wasn’t going anywhere so I went to the office-just the same. I usually travel with my husband, but for some reason I was running late that day and left the house alone.
I got off at Kasumigaseki, where I always change to the Hibiya Line, but the trains were so crowded and there was still time before office hours started, so I thought I’d walk the rest of the way. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Then what do I see but a station attendant lying on the platform, in real pain. But the other station attendants were just standing around doing nothing. It was so odd. I stood there off to one side, just watching. Usually I’d have bounded up the stairs to catch my train, but this one time I felt like, “Let’s just give this a moment.”
Soon a station attendant came down the stairs and I thought, “Ah, I’ll bet he’s gone to call the ambulance. Time for me to get going.” Then suddenly I started to feel really bad myself. “Standing here looking at all this has made me ill,” I thought. “It’s affected me”—I mean, women are more susceptible, aren’t they?—so I decide I’d better go straight outside.
I’m up the stairs, but my head’s a total vacuum, my nose is streaming. I’m crying, too. So I think, “Oh no, I’ve caught a cold.” I’m outside by now, but everything looks so dark. “I must be running a temperature,” I thought. I mean, when you’re running a fever, you just sort of space out, don’t you? So I walked on for a bit, but it gradually became more and more painful. I told myself, “I knew I shouldn’t have stood there watching that collapsed station attendant.”
My eyes hurt long after I reached work. The tears and runnynose just wouldn’t stop, and I kept saying, “My eyes hurt! My eyes hurt!”—I raised quite a fuss at the office. It was
so
painful I just couldn’t work. It was dark inside, too. I glanced over to make sure the lights weren’t switched off. “Strange,” I thought, “how can everything be so dark with the lights on?” It was darker than if I’d been wearing sunglasses. Everyone else said, “It’s not dark at all,” as if they thought I was mad.
Later on the general manager came around asking, “Anyone here feeling ill?” I told him my eyes hurt and they’d mentioned the same symptoms on TV, so he told me to go to the hospital. But they still didn’t know at that point it was poison gas. Some sort of explosion on the subway, was all they could say … There was one other person in the company who suffered injuries a lot worse than mine—hospitalized for a week, apparently.
As it turns out, sarin hadn’t been planted on the train I took, I’d inhaled it at the station. I couldn’t tell at the time. It was in the train across the platform. I was at the rear of the train and the sarin was at the front of the train opposite me. So when I got off my train I was right there … Talk about bad luck. That station attendant died, you know.
But when I left the station at that point, there was no ambulance and everyone was walking around like normal. You’d never have guessed anything was wrong. There was only that station attendant who keeled over. I thought he’d had a heart attack or something. If the station attendant hadn’t been lying there, I might have just walked on by without noticing a thing.
Anyway, my eyes hurt, so I knew I ought to see an eye doctor. I didn’t know what to expect. I went to an ordinary local eye clinic, but the doctor took one look at my eyes and said: “Nothing to worry about. The pupils are just a little contracted, that’s all.” “But it hurts,” I said. At which point the senior doctor came out and said: “Hmm. This is bad. Better get to a major hospital.” So I took a taxi to Toranomon
The day of the gas attack fell between holidays, so only about half the staff showed up for work, but I wasn’t going anywhere so I went to the office-just the same. I usually travel with my husband, but for some reason I was running late that day and left the house alone.
I got off at Kasumigaseki, where I always change to the Hibiya Line, but the trains were so crowded and there was still time before office hours started, so I thought I’d walk the rest of the way. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk. Then what do I see but a station attendant lying on the platform, in real pain. But the other station attendants were just standing around doing nothing. It was so odd. I stood there off to one side, just watching. Usually I’d have bounded up the stairs to catch my train, but this one time I felt like, “Let’s just give this a moment.”
Soon a station attendant came down the stairs and I thought, “Ah, I’ll bet he’s gone to call the ambulance. Time for me to get going.” Then suddenly I started to feel really bad myself. “Standing here looking at all this has made me ill,” I thought. “It’s affected me”—I mean, women are more susceptible, aren’t they?—so I decide I’d better go straight outside.
I’m up the stairs, but my head’s a total vacuum, my nose is streaming. I’m crying, too. So I think, “Oh no, I’ve caught a cold.” I’m outside by now, but everything looks so dark. “I must be running a temperature,” I thought. I mean, when you’re running a fever, you just sort of space out, don’t you? So I walked on for a bit, but it gradually became more and more painful. I told myself, “I knew I shouldn’t have stood there watching that collapsed station attendant.”
My eyes hurt long after I reached work. The tears and runnynose just wouldn’t stop, and I kept saying, “My eyes hurt! My eyes hurt!”—I raised quite a fuss at the office. It was
so
painful I just couldn’t work. It was dark inside, too. I glanced over to make sure the lights weren’t switched off. “Strange,” I thought, “how can everything be so dark with the lights on?” It was darker than if I’d been wearing sunglasses. Everyone else said, “It’s not dark at all,” as if they thought I was mad.
Later on the general manager came around asking, “Anyone here feeling ill?” I told him my eyes hurt and they’d mentioned the same symptoms on TV, so he told me to go to the hospital. But they still didn’t know at that point it was poison gas. Some sort of explosion on the subway, was all they could say … There was one other person in the company who suffered injuries a lot worse than mine—hospitalized for a week, apparently.
As it turns out, sarin hadn’t been planted on the train I took, I’d inhaled it at the station. I couldn’t tell at the time. It was in the train across the platform. I was at the rear of the train and the sarin was at the front of the train opposite me. So when I got off my train I was right there … Talk about bad luck. That station attendant died, you know.
But when I left the station at that point, there was no ambulance and everyone was walking around like normal. You’d never have guessed anything was wrong. There was only that station attendant who keeled over. I thought he’d had a heart attack or something. If the station attendant hadn’t been lying there, I might have just walked on by without noticing a thing.
Anyway, my eyes hurt, so I knew I ought to see an eye doctor. I didn’t know what to expect. I went to an ordinary local eye clinic, but the doctor took one look at my eyes and said: “Nothing to worry about. The pupils are just a little contracted, that’s all.” “But it hurts,” I said. At which point the senior doctor came out and said: “Hmm. This is bad. Better get to a major hospital.” So I took a taxi to Toranomon
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