This work is purely fan fiction and made out of pure love for Godzilla. Godzilla is ©Toho Co., Ltd
Late autumn.
1954
The night Tokyo burned would forever haunt Aoi Handarwa.
She was a little girl then, 9 or 10 years old after the start of September, living with her loving family of two. It was just her and her mother. She was still in her belly when her father was drafted into the army along with her maternal uncle to fight a war against a place called America. Aoi would never meet him. He would pass in the fighting with the Americans in the Great Pacific War. She only knew her father from the stories her mother told her, of how he was such a great man, and intelligent too, like her brother, a member of a science division stationed in China. Her uncle would be the only one to return home after the war ended. Aoi could not remember a time her uncle smiled, he was quite absent, opting to stay away from them.
Aoi and her mother lived in Tokyo for most of their shared lives. She went to elementary school in the Minato Ward and knew how to get on board a train easily. The little girl was quite proud of this accomplishment. Her mother would say so whenever she met with the neighbors. She was good at school and had many friends, even helping her best friend with the difficult words in a book that they would have to read or the math problems their teacher would always give them. She would help her mother with dinner after a long day of work–she worked as a teleprompter for a fishing company–, even if she didn’t like much of what they were eating. Life was simple in those days. Tranquil. One could say dull. A week into the end of October and the beginning of November, things changed.
She remembered overhearing the news the passengers on the train would talk amongst themselves, reading from newspapers or gossiping with one another. Three fishing boats had gone missing near the inland sea. No survivors were reported, leaving a great many of the loved ones in hysterics. There was one woman she remembered, an older lady similar in age to her own mother, weeping into a handkerchief while another woman, a younger one possibly her daughter or daughter-in-law given the ring on her finger, was trying to calm her down. Aoi thought this was odd but paid no attention to it. But then more news came in the next day and people were talking about it more frequently and openly. “Did you hear?” People would say, “Did you hear about the missing boats?” “I hear there were only three survivors from the Bingo Maru?” “I heard it was the Eiko Maru.” “They say they were picked up by fishermen off Odo Island.” But it always ended with “But I’m sure the government will sort it out. Don’t make a public fuss and I’m sure the authorities will tell us what’s going on, you’ll see.”
Aoi got the same answer from her mother when asked about the boats and the fishermen. Almost word for word. However she added no matter what were to happen, she would always be there for her. That was the last time her mother had given her hope.
It started early that evening. Aoi had just gone to bed, resting for a busy school day. They were studying for a big exam, when she heard the cannon shots and the rattling of machine guns. She jolted straight up seeing the flashes of lights coming from the shoreline followed by a howling roar. Her mother opened the shoji to her room, bag in hand, terror in her eyes, ordering her to get her clothes on and get a backpack ready. Before Aoi could ask why the air raid sirens came on and in the distance, she could hear something else over the noise. It was a sound she nor anyone of her generation could ever forget. A deep bellowing sound that rose high in pitch before ending with a growl. She would never forget that sound. Not even in her most private moments. Nor would she forget the glow of the fires that erupted from the houses after a beam of pure blue flame came bearing down on the wooden structures, causing explosions for miles around, spreading faster than the crowds of people fleeing could run.
Aoi and her mother join them.
The crowds were something Aoi never wanted to see again, seeing the terror in the people’s faces, shoving and pushing, screaming. Some were carrying stuff, carrying children like her mother did after she almost lost her in the sea. Some were bent over, crying over the bodies of loved ones who weren’t moving at all. Fire trucks sped past them, ringing bells to get people’s attention. “Get out of the way, you idiots!” was what was supposed to be meant. But not a lot of people listened. A little kid was almost ran over by a speeding truck until a man rushed over scooping him up in his arms. She watched as embers from the burning buildings danced around her like fairies in her storybook before disappearing. Only these fairies were mean and hurt you when they touch you or anything else. The night sky above glowed a bright red as smoke billowed up in huge columns. The smell of the smoke made Aoi cough loudly. Her mother told her not to breathe it in but couldn’t hear her over the chaos. Suddenly more cannons were fired at something that was approaching them. She could see companies of JSDF tanks rolling in the streets firing upwards that something. Then came the BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! of a giant’s footfalls, followed by that roar.
That roar. That roar that will haunt her forever.
It was too dark to see anything through the smoke but something was indeed coming. Something big, standing over a building which it toppled down with a mere push of its long tail. A mere swing and it came down. Aoi looked over her mother’s shoulder as they ran, a tank swatted away by an invisible force like a child’s toy sailed over them before crashing in the front of a convenience store. They watched as an ethereal blue light came from the thing’s back followed by the blue fire. Her thoughts remarked how the fire was a very pretty blue before she and the people around her were tossed into the air from the ensuing explosion.
Moments later, Aoi rose from the burning rubble, pushing the debris off of her with all her might. Her ears were ringing, her hair caked in blood, her blood, and her arm sizzling from being severely burned. She cried out trying to raise her arm before holding it and letting it hang limp. The city around her was nothing but flame. Where a building was now set ablaze by a force of pure unknowable destruction. Where a crowd of fleeing men, women, and children were standing just moments ago only blackened skeletons remained. The smell of death hung in the air. Aoi called out for her mother. Her voice was raspy and sore. The smoke left a taste in her mouth. It was dry too, like standing in a desert with the heat of the sun beating down only to find that the heat was all around you and cooking the flesh of those around you. But then the footsteps came back louder than thunder, with that very roar following it. The little girl, barely a speck on the ground, stood on a mound of burning concrete and people gazed up with wide, horrified eyes welling with tears of fear. her stomach sinking deeper than it had ever been before.
Standing before her was a giant. That’s the only thing Aoi could call it. A creature from an age long past when titans roamed and ruled the earth. But to Aoi Handarwa all she saw was a demon, standing taller than the tallest buildings, with the upright posture of a dinosaur, its back jutted long jagged bony plates running down from its brow to the end of its tail glowing that ethereal blue she thought so pretty, illuminating its charcoal black skin. Or scales, like a crocodile’s. Fire erupted from the sides of its mouth filled with sharp teeth. Eyes like white suns peering down at her. Its roar was something she wished she never heard. It was a monster, a kaiju from a time when others like it fed on the radiation of a young world. But mankind had disturbed its long slumber, and, as the price of their arrogance, would forever more be haunted by his existence. To forever live in fear of his name: Godzilla.
Aoi Handarwa was one of the few hundred survivors of the first Kaiju attack recorded in history. In the wake of the attack, the military employed the use of a scientist working on a weapon of unknown design, deploying it personally. The scientist and Godzilla would die together. Over a hundred thousand people lost their lives that night, tens of thousands more suffered from the acute radiation poisoning left in Godzilla’s wake, making Tokyo uninhabitable for thirteen months. The increase of homelessness in the thousands and the creation of refugee centers in Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Sendai only helped in the slightest. Aoi was one of the many forced to leave their homes. Living in overcrowded group homes, waiting in lines for terrible food, and trying to find work or advance her limited education in some way. To some this was nothing new to them, likening it to the war, while most saw this as divine punishment for their sins.
It was the nights Aoi dreaded the most. Restless sleep caused by dreams of fire and death, of the smell of burnt human flesh filling her nostrils every second, tears streaming down her cheeks as she heard those footfalls and that roar. They always ended the same, Godzilla’s powerful breath spewing that blue fire across the city and her waking up in a cold sweat.
Aoi would not return to Tokyo for about forty long years, even after the government had declared the completion of a reconstruction effort that took half that time after the radiation dissipated. The efforts were aid by the assistance of the UN after the attack was made by the recordings of an American journalist who was present that night in 1954 and broadcasted worldwide. Still, after years, she finally faced her fears thanks to her husband Nakajima and their two children. For a time they lived comfortably. Having bought and now owning their apartment building in Saitama, they could send the children to the decent schools while she and her husband worked separate jobs to pay the bills.
Life had finally returned to normal if not for the dreams, the memories, the screams, all of which would be silenced after a bottle of sake or medication for migraines. But nothing lasts forever. Nakajima passed away after an automotive accident killed him and their daughter. The funeral was quiet, few people arrived, and the ones who did only said their condolences before leaving. Her son, Satomi, would leave home six years later before returning home five more years with a pair of children. His children, a smart-mouthed four-year-old named Katsu and a small baby boy, Tohru.
Her grandchildren. Aoi couldn’t be more happy at this news. The four lived with her until the day Satomi passed as well after a harrowing battle with cancer after a year of living together. In spite of her age and the discouragements of both everyone around her, she took it upon herself to raise her grandsons on her own for as long as was needed of her.
Now, almost seventy years have passed since that horrible night in 1954. Aoi, or Granny to everyone in her life, could say she had finally achieved her happiness. Some would say that. She didn’t believe so. That happiness was something one obtains over many years of hardship and dedication. Happiness is what one makes of life and the fortune it brings. To some, she would be considered extraordinarily fortunate being one of the survivors of Godzilla’s Raid. But to Aoi Handarwa, it’s all the more reason not to forget the real truth. That Godzilla wasn’t the last of his kind. It was like his appearance was only the beginning of another long war, only now monsters were the enemy. More came, some like Godzilla, others from other worlds. This was not humankind’s world. At any given point in time man would have to face another foe like Godzilla.
This was no longer an atomic age. But an Age of Monsters.
Never forget, she would hear her mother’s voice as she slept. Never forget. Never forget.
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