THE MODERN KAIJU ERA
Part 1:
"Dawn of the Age of Monsters"
By: 2nd Lt. Anthony Hicks,
United States Army
"They say the Age of Monsters (AoM) began in 1954, when Godzilla left Tokyo, Japan a smoldering wasteland of destruction and death. Others call 1954 the beginning of the Second AoM, since all the evidence seems to suggest that before Man, and even a bit after, the Kaiju ruled the Earth in ancient times. Some even say that we have always lived in the AoM; we just exist on the planet by their good graces. Well I say damn their 'good graces', because for me, the Age of Monsters began in 1953, in the greatest city in the world.
Growing up on Staten Island, I had the same fascination with the giant monsters roaming around as any other little boy. I had all the toys, read all the comics. My friends had their favorite ones, like Rodan, Godzilla, and all the giant creatures in the southwest, a result of the nuclear tests. But my favorite was one I considered to be a hometown boy. True he immigrated, but isn't New York City the place for that sort of thing?
In 1953, the unimaginatively named: "operation: Experiment" was conducted far north of the Arctic Circle, and was another in the series of tests to understand the effects of Nuclear explosions. How could they be expected to know that they would unleash a creature straight out of mythology, and usher in 60 years of worldwide conflict between man and monster? History may forgive them, but I wonder if they ever forgave themselves
In any case, the Rhedosaurus then freed from eons of icy imprisonment, made it's way southward, following the eastern coast of North America, causing millions of dollars in damages and taking about a dozen lives in separate assaults on commercial ships and coastal settlements. The Paleontologist Thurgood Elson, who had used eyewitness testimony to identify the animal using depictions of fossilized creatures found in the region.
Tracking it to the Hudson River canyon, Professor Elson was killed when the beast swallowed the diving bell he had used to observe the creature at a depth. Soon after, the Rhedosaurus came ashore in Manhattan in a rampage that killed a hundred and eighty people, injured 1500 more, and caused over 300 million in damages. In the process of repelling the monster, the army had drawn its blood, which unleashed something just as destructive, a prehistoric contagion. Pictures I saw of the sick in history books as a kid still give me nightmares, hundreds of people crammed into hospital wards because of the fear of the thing returning. Whole families sitting together, with blood leaking from their eyes, and their lips swollen and covered with hardened barnacle-like growths.
When it was finally killed, taking Coney Island down in a blaze of glory with it, I think the entire country felt a wave of relief. New York newspapers, the sensationalist rags they ever were, plastered the title: "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" across their headlines. I guess 'Rhedosaurus' wasn't eye-catching enough to be above the fold. It was that same moniker that I looked at every weekend me and the boys went to Coney Island, where the bronze statue of the monster still stands today.
Understandably, the world was astounded, and thought there was nothing short of another world war that could make a bigger impact on the world than the resurgence of a prehistoric monster. Well there was, a bigger prehistoric monster.
Legends of Godzilla had existed in Polynesia for hundreds of years, keeping the local islanders in fear of incurring the wrath of a mythical sea dragon. Whenever fishing was poor or the weather was inclement, the natives of Odo Island would perform a ritual dance, and send a virgin girl out on a raft to appease whatever offense caused Gojira to inflict their misfortune. Of course, Godzilla was most likely not even aware of anything they were doing.
But something did get his attention, the US nuclear tests in the South Pacific. We would later learn from time traveling con artists that Godzilla began life as a modern day Therapsid, isolated and living on Lagos Island. Injured in the crossfire between Japanese soldiers and American Marines, it survived long enough to become a victim of the United States military a second time.
In 1946, Operation Crossroads dropped two, 21-kiloton nuclear fission bombs on the Bikini Atoll, to test the effects they would have on naval fleets. The test spread more radioactive water then they expected, but that was the least of the unintended consequences. Licking whatever wounds it had sustained from the American guns, I can only imagine what it must have been thinking when it watched the mushroom cloud rise in the distance, and the blast radius racing towards him.
We'll never know what its life was like during those intermediate years, how the radiation must have transformed him, turning his skin into the blanket of charred and torn flesh, much like the Keloid scars of the Hiroshima survivors. It must have been a nightmare to live through, feeling you body grow to unnatural sizes, his vertebrae morphing and protruding through his back. The heat of the radiation burning you mercilessly, turning his world into unrelenting torment. The process must have left him volatile and deranged, and it's no surprise his first encounter with human civilization would be a disaster.
8 years later in 1954, Godzilla made his first appearance. It started with the mysterious sinking of the fishing trawler, The Lucky Dragon No.5. The trend would continue with several other small vessels disappearing, all survivors reporting a haunting moan, followed by a blinding flash of light and intense heat before the ship burst into flames. Survivors likewise all suffered from intense radiation poisoning and died within days. With the Rhedosaurus still fresh in international minds, the fear was that something else had been freed from the artic ice.
So while American and Soviet navies searched every square meter of water from the Artic circle to Hokkaido, the greatest monster in history snuck in right under their noses. The small settlement of Odo Island, faithful to the legend for so long would have their devotion rewarded, unfortunately for them. In Godzilla's first landfall, he wiped-out half the village within minutes, simply by strolling through. Dozens were killed and the radioactive contamination would force the natives to be relocated to the mainland.
An American reporter stopping by in Tokyo to visit a friend, Mr. Steve Martin, became privy to the story of the attack and used his connections to join the investigative team sent to the island the next day. During the course of their documenting the evidence, Godzilla returned, and was captured on film for the first time. The rest as you know, is history.
Months later, while the world was still in mortified shock over what Godzilla had done to Tokyo, the consequences of our tampering with elemental forces were only just beginning.
In the sweltering August heat of New Mexico, the first of many fruits of the nuclear testing done in the Southwest began dropping. Ants, mutated by the radiation that saturated the proving grounds, emerged from the underground tunnels and began pillaging the nearby rural homesteads. For the next month, a war broke out between the US military and this colony of what came to be called 'Goliath Ants', referred to simply by the locals as 'THEM'.
Eventually the aggressive firebombing and painstaking exploration of the tunnels brought their numbers into manageable proportions. Subsequent extensive study of their colony revealed that the radiation dispersed by the nuclear explosions was far more pervasive than imagined. The tunnels reached miles underground, and covered half the state, poisoning sources of groundwater.
The remainder of 1954 saw America and Japan struggling to recover from the decimation of Tokyo, and the epidemic of contaminated water and soil in the Southwest. But the onslaught of primeval vengeance would keep coming.
In January of 1955, a freak accident left Japanese fishing spotter Kobe Kobayashi stranded on a remote island, where he witnessed a colossal battle between a new quadruped monster, and incredibly, Godzilla. Less than a year after the world had been assured that the monster had been killed in Tokyo bay, many initially dismissed his testimony as delusions from dehydration. But Authorities were forced to take him seriously when his friend and rescuer Shoichi Tsukioka came forward to support his story.
Japanese government and military officials coordinated with American military support in the immediate fear that Godzilla would once again come to Tokyo. Coastal cities were put under alert and army units stationed at key infrastructure locations, while scientists scrambled to identify this second monster, and for a way to defeat Godzilla once and for all. But the lead Japanese scientist Dr. Kyohei Yamane declared in very remorseful terms, that they could not conceive of a way, and that they could only hope to weather his fury as they might a hurricane.
Before defensive measures could be fully implemented, both Godzilla and the other monster, now called Anguirus, appeared in Osaka, and resumed their ancient feud. Godzilla would emerge the victor of a fight so brutal and devastating; it would leave the city a burning wasteland. But it then left Mankind with the uncertainty of how to deal with one who had been titled, 'The King of the Monsters'.
Air patrols were able to track Godzilla at he migrated northwards, where it was decided that if Godzilla could not be destroyed, he could be imprisoned.
At this point American military focus became divided as a titanic tarantula rampaged through Arizona, threatening millions as troops chased it from one town after another. Finally, it was destroyed by a bombardment of napalm in the desert mere miles from Phoenix. The investigation afterwards would reveal that the creature had been the experiment of Professor Gerald Deemer, who had sought to understand how animal life was being affected by the nuclear testing. The Tarantula, like the Goliath ants, would join the ranks of several more species to be transformed to gigantic sizes.
Godzilla by now had taken refuge on one of the many uninhabited islands of rock and ice in the Bearing Sea. Both Kobayashi and Tsukioka volunteered their services to monitor the beast from the air while a plan was devised to confine him. Tragically however, during one of Kobayashi's shifts, Godzilla spotted him and used his atomic breath to bring his plane down. The craft collided into a mountainside and caused an avalanche of tons of ice that buried Godzilla up to his ankles.
Another pilot who had witnessed the death, was nonetheless struck by an ingenious idea to beat the monster. Bringing his plan to military leaders, they agreed to try and bury Godzilla in ice, hopefully causing the reptile-like creature to go into hibernation. Waiting until Godzilla was resting in an opportune location, a combined Japanese and American air fleet launched their attacks. With the element of surprise on their side, a two-element assault was put into action. Squadrons of fighter jets would swoop-in and launch their missiles into the mountainside where Godzilla was resting below in the narrow valley.
The repeated bombardment dislodged hundreds of tons of ice and rock, sending it all down-slope where it steadily buried the monster. Godzilla attempted to flee, but ground forces that had landed emplaced a barrier of fire where the valley opened to the sea, cutting off his escape. Though we would later learn that Godzilla could have breached the fire without harm, the creature seemed to be unaware of his true potential, and trapped between ice and fire, he was eventually engulfed, where he would remain imprisoned for the next several years.
With the understanding that the problem of theses giant monsters would not be going away anytime soon, the world adopted a unique Japanese phrase to categorize them, Kaiju. It wasn't long until the next one emerged from the nether-regions of the Earth.
Starting in September of 1955, American and Soviet submarines began reporting getting attacked by an enormous sea creature, which would attach itself to their ship, causing some damage, but ultimately disengage and move on. Fears that Anguirus was behind the incidents were dismissed when inspectors discovered the marks of huge suction cups on the hulls of several ships. This evidence led scientists to conclude that an octopus of titanic size was responsible, mistaking the subs for whales, its natural prey.
The string of attacks led towards the American west coast, and preparing for the worst, major cities from Los Angeles to Seattle were reinforced with defensive measures. The beast would finally reach the coast at San Francisco, where an electrified net had been staged underwater to protect the Golden Gate Bridge, which had also been electrified. The shock drove the beast into a rage, thrashing the net and surmounting the bridge in its march towards the inner bay.
The sight of the colossal octopus thrashing its tentacles and advancing on the city panicked the populace, and hampered attempts to evacuate and coordinate a defensive response. Making landfall, the beast was combated by platoons of soldiers using flame-throwers to repel the searching limbs, and artillery units hammering it with explosive shells. When air support finally arrived, dropping their own munitions on the cephalopod, it was driven back out to sea, where the Navy's 3rd fleet was waiting for it. Unable to evade or withstand the fury of dozens of battle ships and submarines, it was destroyed and sent to the deep. In the days after the attack, an editor for the San Francisco Chronicle pondered where such a mammoth creature, by then named an Oodaku, had been hiding this whole time. He concluded with a foreboding tone that: "It Came From Beneath the Sea".
What followed was a relative breather for the world, the winter of '55 and nearly all of 1956 would pass before another Kaiju would make itself known. This one proving to be as formidable in the air as Godzilla was on land.
In the summer of 1956, a small mining community in the rural mountain village of Kitamatsu on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, a mine collapse unleashed the next wave of horror. The collapse had created an opening to a subterranean chamber where insectoid creatures, of a size not seen since the Carboniferous period, had been in a state of suspended hibernation. Then awakened, these larva like creatures, later named Meganulon, sought sustenance, and at first attacked miners who ventured too near the opening. But soon the draw of food brought them out on night raids to the village, consuming dogs, and breaking into several homes, killing five people.
Police, and a contingent of Army and scientific personnel were brought in to investigate, and interviewed a survivor who remained in a semi-catatonic state. The man spoke feverishly of a monstrous bird, with crimson skin and piercing eyes. In their exploration of the mine, they breached the chamber and confirmed the man's story, by finding not one, but two four-story eggs shells, their inhabitants hatched and gone.
Almost immediately, reports flooded in of unidentified flying objects over the skies of eastern Russia, Korea, and China. Traveling at supersonic speeds, the two creatures now dubbed the 'Rodans', were able to out maneuver any and all jets sent after them. Furthermore, the shockwaves caused by their flight created a wake of destructive concussive force, ripping cities and countrysides apart whenever they flew low enough. They also proved to be predatory towards humans, snatching away hapless victims in the blink of an eye.
What worried officials the most however, was how quickly they could cover large distances; each Rodan was capable of traveling hundreds of kilometers within hours. American scientists announced that based on their speeds, they could fly from Japan to California in a single day, conquering the Pacific skies with virtual impunity.
Their reign of aerial supremacy would not last long however. The two would return to Kyushu, where the pair leveled the city in a storm of fury and hurricane like winds. Concerted military attacks managed to drive them off, where this time, the air force tracked them back to their hidden lair. While resting in a crevice at the foot of the volcanic Mt. Aso, it was decided that the military would bomb the area, hopefully causing a lave flow to consume them.
When the attack commenced, one managed to escape before the onslaught of molten rock poured into their nest. The other, injured after the battle of Kyushu, could get out in time and found itself floundering in the torrent of ashen smoke, which caused it to crash back down, into the streaming magma.
Those who watched the end of the Rodans found themselves captivated by what they saw. As the fallen Rodan cried out in agony, burning alive in the flow, the other circled around, calling back, refusing to leave its partner to die alone. Some even cried as the first Rodan lowered itself down, preferring to join its kindred in death, then be apart. An observer recalled his thoughts as he watched the stunning scene transpire:
"I realized the Rodans were doomed. The heat, the gases, the bombardment; added to their bewilderment. Like moths in those rivers of fire, they seemed almost to welcome the agonies of death. And when, still calling to each other, one of them fell at last into the mountain lava stream, the other still refused to save itself. The last of their kind, masters of the air and earth, the strongest, swiftest creatures that ever breathed - now they sank against the earth like weary children. Each had refused to live without the other... and so they were dying together. I wondered whether I, a twentieth century man, could ever hope to die as well. It was if something human were dying. As the flames consumed them in a fiery holocaust, their last agony wails echoing in a mournful cry ... we stood there staring with a strange fascination. I realize now, that by the narrowest of margins, man had proved himself the stronger. But will it always be so? May not other and more terrible monsters even now be stirring in the darkness? And when, at last, they spring upon us, can we be certain we can beat them back a second time? The answer lies in the future. Our fears, for now, have gone up in flame and smoke."
If he only knew what the next decade would bring."