Godzilla is a giant monster, or daikaijū, that first appeared in the 1954 film of the same name, directed by Ishirō Honda. The character has since become an international pop culture icon, appearing i
Publicity still of Godzilla as portrayed via suitmation in Godzilla (1954)
Teizō Toshimitsu sculpting a prototype for Godzilla's design
Godzilla's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter's skeletal diagram of Godzilla in a modern dinosaur posture
Daigo Fukuryū Maru was a Japanese tuna fishing boat with a crew of 23 men which was contaminated by nuclear fallout from the United States Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapon test at Bikini Atoll on Mar
Godzilla
…awakened and empowered after many years by exposure to nuclear radiation and nuclear testing. With the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Lucky Dragon 5 incident still fresh in the Japanese consciousness, Godzilla was conceived as a metaphor for nuclear weapons. Others have suggested that Godzilla is a…
Daigo Fukuryū Maru on display in Tokyo
Daigo Fukuryū Maru in the early 1950s, shortly before the incident
Medical professionals, before the era of whole body counting, assessing the radioactivity of a bedridden crew member by using a geiger counter on 31 March 1954, focusing on the person's hair, which would have collected dusty fallout.
Inspection of tuna with a geiger counter before sale at a fishmonger's on 31 March 1954