The Movie: Gojira (1954)
What Is It?:
Gojira—or Godzilla, as America renamed him—is a product of nuclear energy,
specifically the hydrogen bomb tests that awoke him from hibernation in the
depths of the Pacific. Anyone who grew up with the full-color schlock fests in
which Godzilla stomped Tokyo while wrestling giant moths and super turtles will
be shocked by his eponymous debut. This is a moody, black and white requiem
that draws some pretty explicit correlations between the horrible destruction
Gojira wreaks on Odo Island and the horrible destruction America rained down on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier. Gojira is a sad and angry invective hailing from a country that
still had much to be sad and angry about.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1945, Hiroshima suffers
an atomic bomb attack from the U.S.
