The events from Pearl Harbor (1941) all the way through to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) were the real world precursor to one of the scariest freaking periods of American history — the arms race. Prior to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese imperialist aggression was literally taking the South Pacific by storm. Guam — the Phillippines — Taiwan — even mainland China, all suffered terribly before the might of the Japanese military.
It was after the raid on Pearl Harbor which wreaked havoc on the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet and destroyed the USS Arizona and USS Oklahoma that one of the Japanese generals solemnly stated “We have awakened a sleeping giant.” His words would eventually be realized on August 1945… not with one, but two atomic weapons, bringing the Japanese to their knees, and World War II to a conclusion.
Less than ten years after the explosions, the Japanese economy still had not made a lot of headway toward bouncing back. There was still much anxiety about the nuclear weapons the United States was constructing– and testing — en masse.
What made the original Godzilla movie so intense was the personal experiences of some of the filmmakers. Several of them had seen firsthand the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, others had been POW’s in mainland China. It was this wartime experience that they effectively managed to channel into “Godzilla”. Godzilla was an allegory for the horror of war in general and the horror of atomic war in particular, while the direct outcry was against atomic testing.

It was just such an atomic test on the Bikini Atoll that poisoned the crew of the Lucky Dragon #5 and sparked fears anew of nuclear apocalypse. It was this event which was still fresh in the mind of the Japanese public when the first Godzilla movie was born. The images of sailors suddenly crying out as the ocean explodes, running for their lives and all for naught –touched a nerve. (The real Lucky Dragon incident was far more insidious. The crew members saw the bomb flash but did not know what it was, and began scooping up the fallout by the armful intending to take some of it back to their families to show them. Little could they know of what horror awaited them!!!) The images of a huge black terror slowly advancing, only lit by flames, was reminiscent of the night time firebombing raids on Tokyo 10 years before. The rampant carnage portrayed in Godzilla mirrors that of the real life carnage in WWII.

But it is the apolitical message of Godzilla that drives the point home. It is not America or Russia or any other single nation that is solely responsible for unleashing the horrors of the splitting of the atom, it is man. What one man did with E=MC2 Serizawa attempts to undo in the gothic setting of his basement laboratory with the formula for the O2 Destroyer, with mixed results, the eventual destruction of Godzilla along with himself. Godzilla himself is seen as alternately an incarnation of the atomic bomb as well as a victim of it…removed from his own natural habitat, his own natural life span, even seemingly his own mortality, as a creature which should not have been alive but was…at once powerful and…pathetic.

Various angles have been played on the nature of the character Godzilla. Godzilla as a force of nature, Godzilla as the homeland defender, Godzilla as ancient deity, Godzilla the friend of all children, Godzilla the concerned dad. And all are unique in their own manner. But in this day and age where terrorism and amoral brutality runs rampant, where terrorists lust after the power promised them by possession of the Bomb, where even 64 years after the fact we are still haunted by the shadow of the possibility of nuclear conflict, the most relevant is still the Godzilla which is the epitome of mindless, brutal nuclear rage, leaving a path of death and misery in its wake.

And the warning still lives on that in the next armed nuclear conflict a monster may yet arise that even an Oxygen Destroyer may not remedy…

So far, mankind appears to have heeded this warning, as despite being nuclear proliferation, the human race has not yet stepped into the abyss from which there is no return. And if the large black figure with a demonic glare and terrible teeth stationed at the entrance to that abyss still cranks out movie after movie after movie for us to watch because we are still here….

Then he has done his job.

Here’s an overview I did of the Apes mythos: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B673-DES569.htm.

BTW- there is a new 5 or 6 pak of early Godzila films- most on 2 DVDs- incl. Godzilla Raids Again. I plan on getting it, and it includes Godzy/Gojira. Look on Amazon and it should be here:

http://www.amazon.com/Godzilla-Collection/dp/B000VXWK86/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1208810098&sr=1-1

I have read a lot of movie reviews and even wrote a few of them myself, and I honestly must say that I found your reviews of Gojira & Godzilla to be among the best written movie reviews I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. I have never really been much of a Godzilla fanatic,(My brother is the
Godzillaphile of the family, while I have always thought the Planet Of The Apes films were the best Sci-Fi/Fantasy films ever made.) But my brother suggested a few times that I should go and check out a few Godzilla movies. So I recently began doing some reading up about them just to see what some of the best known critics have to say about Godzilla and to find out what all the fuss is about. Now after reading your extremely inspired, informative and entertaining reviews, I can’t wait to go out and buy myself a copy of the Double Disc DVD versions of Gojira & Godzilla, King Of The Monsters. I just happen to come across your review by accident recently and even suggested to my brother that he ought to read it too. I’m glad that I took the time to read it all even though I felt like I needed a dictionary and a thesaurus to understand some of it,(lol)this is still one of the best movie or film reviews I ever read. Thank You very much, you may have done what my brother has tried to do a few times, turn me into a Godzillaphile too! If you could just write another article like this about the Planet Of The Apes movies I’d really appreciate it! lol.