"Gojira" was a
Japanese horror film (it would not be considered a "monster movie" until it reached American shores) that depicted a large radioactive animal (believed by scientist characters to have lived sometime in the intermediate stage between the prehistoric era and current times) that attacks and sinks several
fishing vessels and finally ends with his raiding
Tokyo twice over the course of a few days, resulting in the city's destruction and wide-scal deaths. His rampage is clearly meant to reflect the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (though no dirrect political connection is ever made), though most
people do not know how the concept for the movie was originally created.
"Gojira" was inspired by America'
s "King Kong," which lead "Gojira" creator Tomoyuki Tanaka to want to create a horrow film using a monster.
But the reason a radioactive
beast that lays siege to Tokyo was used was becuase of an American hydrogen bomb
test designated "Castle-Bravo" whose fallout contaminated a Japanese
fishing trawler, resulting in some of the
crew's deaths and a national recall of
fish products because of radiated tuna aboard the vessel that was served into the market unknowingly. An H-Bomb setup is also used to explain Godzilla's strange powers and hideously deformed physik.
"Castle-Bravo" has become the calling card of anti-nuclear activists ever since the incident involving the trawler, and Godzilla has seen more films than any other character.