A Different Beginning

11.24.2024

If you love Godzilla (1954) like I do, then “Godzilla” 1954 Ultimate Research book (1954「ゴジラ」研究極本), published in 2023, is a must for your bookshelf. It expanded upon the content of Special Edition Movie Hidden Treasures: The First Godzilla Research Reader (別冊映画秘宝初代ゴジラ研究読本 (洋泉社MOOK 別冊映画秘宝)) published by Yosensha in 2014, in an oversized edition. This original Godzilla research reader dishes out great behind-the-scenes details with full of in-depth interviews and rare unearthed materials. As I was combing through its pages looking for content to translate, I came across a section comparing the story and details between the first to the last script. And I found an eye-popping difference that would have made explicit what was always implied but disguised in the opening scene of the film: “What is most memorable about the content is the opening announcement, which directly denounces the hydrogen bomb experiments, along with a series of cuts of footage from the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident.”¹

The final Godzilla script begins as the film opens with the cargo ship Eiko Maru sailing the Pacific Ocean heading for Tokyo when a sudden flash of light blinds its crew and swallows the vessel in flames. Japanese audiences immediately connected this opening scene of the Eiko Maru with the tragic event of the Japanese crew of the Lucky Dragon No 5 who witnessed the atomic flash, covered in nuclear fallout and poisoned at sea from the U.S. hydrogen bomb tested at the Bikini Atoll, earlier in the year on March 3. For international moviegoers decades removed from the years of U.S. bomb testing from the late 40s through the 50s, the historical context of the bomb testing and Lucky Dragon that provides the backstory to the birth of Godzilla would be missed and lost in translation. But the first script would have provided this context from the opening scene with the voice of an announcer and documentary footage.

Rather than beginning with the destruction of the Eiko Maru, the U.S. release of Godzilla King of the Monsters in 1956 opens with the aftermath of Godzilla’s rampage of Tokyo and the eyewitness account of foreign correspondent Steve Martin, played by Raymond Burr, who had been bloodied and buried beneath debris. The atomic origins of Godzilla are left to be revealed later in the film. However, the original Godzilla script, “G Work”「G作品｣, written by novelist Shigeru Kayama sets the historical context immediately leaving no doubt to the mysterious monster’s origin and cause of its birth. The script opens with this announcement:

Then the story of Godzilla begins with a bizarre incident: “A huge shadow like a black mountain appeared close to the bow of the ship” in the seas near Odo Island in the southeast Pacific Ocean. But young viewers like me watching Godzilla for the first time in the 1970s had not been taught in school about the U.S. bomb tests in the Marshall Islands after World War II and nor about their devastating consequences for the islands and their inhabitants. So I did not grasp Godzilla’s importance and the film’s message of anti-nuclear proliferation. Only years later did I come to know and understand the historical events, contexts and stories that made Godzilla. Adding this original opening scene from the first script to the film as bonus footage would be a great service to fans and future audiences.