“The Earth has many deep pockets, abyssal regions that contain secrets we have yet to discover.”
In the Pacific Ocean, near Odo Island, a Japanese freighter, the Eikō-Maru, is attacked. Something from under the water’s surface destroys the ship. The Bingo-Maru is sent to investigate. It too is attacked. A second search boat is sent out and finds a few survivors. Again the second rescue ship is attacked.
Meanwhile, the fishermen in the area of the island report that they have not been able to catch any fish recently. One of the elders believes that the poor fishing and the disasters are the result of Godzilla. Godzilla is from an ancient legend. Reporters descend on the island. During the night a typhoon comes up and buildings are destroyed. One of the villagers maintains that he saw the monster. An investigation is launched.
Paleontologist Dr. Kyohei Yamane is sent to the island. Yamane finds giant footprints and a long extinct trilobite. They are both contaminated with radioactivity. An alarm goes off on the island. The villagers are in a panic. Godzilla appears over the top of a mountain. Yamane believes Godzilla is a prehistoric reptile. He believes that Godzilla is radioactive due to the results of an atomic bomb.
Godzilla attacks Japan. He rises out of Tokyo Bay and heads inland and stomps all over Tokyo. The military try everything they can think of but Godzilla is too powerful. Nothing they try works. The only possible hope for the world is an invention being worked on by Dr. Daisuke Serizawa. It is called the Oxygen Destroyer. It is more powerful than a nuclear bomb but Dr. Serizawa refuses to use it. He believes his weapon is more dangerous that Godzilla himself.
“Godzilla” was released in 1954 and was directed by Ishiro Honda. Special effects were done by Eiji Tsuburaya and Yasuyuki Inoue.
Godzilla was designed by Teizo Toshimitsu and Akira Watanabe. Toshimitsu and Watanabe decided to base Godzilla's design on dinosaurs and, by using dinosaur books and magazines as a reference, combined elements of a Tyrannosaurus, an Iguanodon and the dorsal fins of a Stegosaurus. The Godzilla suit was constructed by Kanji Yagi, Koei Yagi, and Eizo Kaimai. The first suit weighted 220 pounds. The suit guys were Haruo Nakajima and Katsumi Tezuka. Nakajima lost 20 pounds during the production of the film. He would go on to play Godzilla as well as other monsters until he retired in 1972. The film's composer Akira Ifukube created Godzilla’s iconic roar using instruments. Ifukube rubbed a leather glove through the loosened lower strings of a contrabass and altered the pitch and speed of the recording until the final roar was conceived.
In 2004, for his 50th anniversary, Godzilla was given a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame. It is the only Godzilla movie to receive a Japanese Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It lost to “Seven Samurai” but won Best Visual Effects.
In the film, Godzilla symbolizes nuclear holocaust from Japan's perspective and has since been culturally identified as a strong metaphor for nuclear weapons. Japan is the only country on which nuclear bombs were used. The United States is the only country to use nuclear bombs.