Peace is the most elusive of dreams.
I’ve spent my entire life chasing it. Craving it. Aching to see it come to pass. But there’s a fine line between dreams and nightmares. And when the scale tips away from peace, monsters are never far behind…
I was conscripted into the army at 17 years old. It was like a death. A weapon fired directly into my very being, murdering my philosophy and professional ambitions in cold blood. I’d been on track to attend university, to pursue a field I’d always yearned to lose myself in. Nothing glamorous, but like peace, it was my dream. There was a job in my future, guidance from experts anxious to help launch my career. There were opportunities. There was the promise of success, of marriage, of a future.
The army changed that. I wouldn’t know how much until it was too late.
My drafting came with a bitter irony: if the powers that be had deemed the war worth starting a year earlier, or perhaps my parents had born me three years before Showa rather than two, my profession would likely have exempted me from service. I would’ve been protected. But fate did not see fit to rearrange the chessboard of life for my benefit. It was my fate to be a nameless soldier, one of many. Perhaps it was my fate to die.
War is a monstrous thing. An infecting, grotesque entity that blinds rational minds and hungers for the very essence of life. It was antithetical to every fiber of my soul, a twisted reflection of how my mind and heart saw the world. I wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing.
The choice wasn’t mine, of course. They called. I answered. I had to answer. We all did.
I was handed a gun, taught to hit a target between the eyes with a single bullet. Taught to kill.
I was ill. I lost weight, maybe six and a half kilos or so. I couldn’t eat. My sleep was horrid.
I didn’t want to kill.
This was not the peace I’d dreamed of. It was sickening, like a feeling of exhaustion before sleep, and the dread of knowing your sleep will inevitably bring nightmares. Life had become little more than the anticipation of death. Of my own, surely, but also of those around me. My comrades, my enemies… all human lives balanced on the edge of demise. I saw each as a light, the delicate flames of candles burning in a raging storm as the gusting winds and heavy rains of war made their extinguishment all but inevitable.
And above the storm, more lights… darker ones. Shadows moving about in the void, stirring the tempest below them. A manmade storm. A consequence of power’s grip over the soul, dragging more souls – more lights – into hell forever, to never shine again. Maybe my light was among them. Maybe not. There was no way to know. And in the absence of knowledge, there was nothing to do but wait and fear and pray…
I only saw combat once. Just once.
The name of the island escapes my mind. Just as well, I suppose. I remember that day mostly in flashes, images frozen in the light of machine gun fire. It was raining. The sounds of screaming mixed with the constant, heavy thudding of water slamming into the foliage above us. Chaos was the order of the day. Angry, bloody, unhinged chaos that seeped into my pores, weighing me down in body and soul alike. I remember being confused, dizzy. I couldn’t tell which way was forward or backward, which advancing mass of soon-to-be-dead men was mine to fight with. The insanity had disoriented me, robbed me of my senses. And that was before the explosion…
My mind will never recollect the specifics, I’m afraid. I don’t believe it was I who stepped on the mine. It may have been a brother in arms, a soldier several paces ahead of me. Or perhaps it was my foot that triggered it. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
It was all over in a moment. Less than a moment. It happened faster than my eyes could perceive. And for a while, my eyes perceived nothing at all. There was the sound of air combusting, a burst of light, and then… nothing. My vision seared a bright white, and then plunged into a darkness so absolute that my mind went blank. My ears rang with a high tone, casting a net of silence over my surroundings. The chaos had snapped into nonexistence in an instant. My senses were in limbo. I barely felt myself hit the ground.
The first perception to return was touch. I could feel the soggy ground beneath me. And then, the scent – faint at first, and then overpowering – of death. The sounds of chaos faded back in, and then… pain. Horrible, searing pain in my face and chest. I was injured. I didn’t know how badly. And in the moment, I didn’t care.
I laid silently, my body curled upon itself as the sounds of gunfire assaulted my damaged senses. I felt the mud around me begin to encroach upon my clothing, mingling with sweat and blood. I allowed my mind to drift away from the crippling nightmare of my reality. I imagined home. I prayed for peace. But I feared the war – the damned war that raged all around my broken body – would rob me of both.
How long I laid in that patch of blood-soaked Pacific mud, I’ll never know. I was likely passed over a dozen times, mistaken for a corpse. When someone finally did check for a pulse, I was peeled from the ground and placed on a stretcher. My consciousness blinked in and out; approaching officers, fade to black, a doctor standing over me, fade to black once more… The cycle repeated for hours. Maybe days. When my mind finally allowed me to stay conscious, I awoke to bandages covering my face and torso. One arm was in a sling. I still couldn’t see quite right. My ears – particularly my right ear – still rang loudly. And the pain from before began to creep back…
The pain was the easy part. It was the memory of that day, of all I had seen, all I had felt. So much pain. Not just my own. There had been pain all around me. With every bullet shot, with every light snuffed out by gunfire, more and more agony spilled into the atmosphere, polluting it with trauma and dread. I’d lost something of myself on that day, both physically and spiritually. I’d come to know the horrors of man and his capacity for destruction. I’d stared that destruction in the eye, felt its claws rip at my flesh and tear away at my very soul.
On that day, I knew what it meant – how it felt – to behold a monster.
I wouldn’t remain on the island for long. The Imperial army knew a lost cause when they saw one, at least when it came to the frontlines. My wounds, of course, were not fatal, but they were severe and permanent. My recovery would be long. And my country had other ways of putting me to work for the war.
And so, I returned to my homeland a scarred man. Those who awaited me only saw the scars on my body, but I’ve spent the rest of my life tending the wounds that only I can see. The horrors of war, the anguish of knowing my dream of peace would never come to pass in a world so warped and monstrous… the weight of it all was beyond maddening. And then, there was the guilt of survival. Why, when death had surrounded me on all sides, had I been spared? Had it been divine intervention? Had it been little more than luck, a question of timing, physics, and other provable variables? Could I truly call my continued existence, now compromised by trauma and deformity, “luck” in any sense of the word? I didn’t know. Not knowing brought its own new form of pain. But my answers, and my clarity, would come in time…
For the next four years after my discharge, I worked in a different capacity for what one might call “the cause.” By day, I would see doctors – endless doctors – for treatment of my wounds, and by night, I would serve my country. Not on a battlefield, but in a laboratory. My proverbial silver lining – and the beginning of the clarity I sought – was the chance to pursue the field I’d wanted to enter before the war. To, in a sense, pick up where I’d left off. Fate had dealt me the most unexpected of hands, but after surviving hell itself, I’d been led back to the path I was meant to be on. It wasn’t yet ideal, but things were beginning to realign.
Soon, the doctor visits dwindled to twice a week, then to once, then to none at all. I began to make significant strides in my work, attracting acclaim in multiple scientific circles and earning enough trust with the Imperial government to work without constant monitoring. By the time the war ended, I’d established myself as something approaching preeminence; I was getting grants, job offers, opportunities for collaboration. I’d made several breakthroughs, invented a few instruments, and even found time to write and publish a few papers on my growing body of research.
Not an insignificant set of accomplishments for a man with one eye.
The next near decade of my life was, in a fashion, as much a blur as my brief time in the war had been. A blur of lectures, papers, breakthroughs, and long nights spent staring at beakers and research notes. In many ways, it was something akin to paradise. Science had always been my passion, my safe place to let my mind wander and wonder in equal measure. As a child, I’d stare at the intricate patterns on the maple leaves that fell near my home, losing myself in deep thoughts of how such perfect objects could come to exist. What infinitesimal elements made each leaf look and work the way it did? How did we work? How did the air around us work? I found my answers in chemistry, in learning the inner workings of the many, many things we take for granted. What secrets could be found in the cells of those leaves? In the molecules of our skin? In the very atoms of the oxygen we breathe?
After the war, science became my refuge more than ever before. I’d been able to craft something of a comfortable life for myself. I had a lab in my home and no need for assistants. I had solitude, with only the sounds of birds outside my window and the music from my radio to break the silence. I was respected (or, perhaps, feared) enough to be left alone; I gave few interviews, and kept only a small circle of friends. Among them, of course, was Yamane-sensei, whose generosity and belief in me during my university days had, in many ways, made my goal of a career in research science possible. It was his home I’d eaten in as a child, his connections that aided my ambitions, his daughter I was destined to merry…
But through it all, despite my successes and accomplishments, the darkness of my past refused to release me. There was still emptiness, hopelessness. My dream of peace had not yet come to pass.
It would take a new tragedy to finally carry that dream home.
I’d had my fill of tragedy, of course. A sane man does not emerge alive from a war that should’ve killed him – a war that did kill so many others – hoping to repeat the nightmare. But history is nothing if not cyclical; one tragedy so often begats another. And while the war was not directly responsible for what happened in the summer of 1954, a link – profound in its depth and nightmarish in its realization – bound them in a dance of fire and death.
It was on a night several months prior to this tragedy that the seeds my fate were planted. The culmination of my life’s obsession with chemistry – and with oxygen, in particular – had come in a single, horrifying moment of explosive revelation. That night, before the sight of my single, unscarred eye, a benign experiment had become a prophesy of doom. A device had become a weapon. A simple element – a pivotal component of the very air we breathe to live – became a catalyst for an Armageddon in potentia.
It was never meant to be. In my own (perhaps foolish) way, I’d hoped to dedicate my postwar life to the betterment of my species. If some small discovery, innovation, or breakthrough from my research could’ve benefited my fellow man, perhaps the peace I’d long sought could’ve been within reach. But on that night, I saw only horror. I – a mere research scientist – had inadvertently opened the gates of hell once again. Without any intention of doing so, I’d split a new kind of atom. My mind played out the future in vivid clarity: oceans boiling over in asphyxiating foam and violent waves. Cities stripped of life and reduced to graveyards. A new arms race. A new nightmare. A new bomb…
That’s all I dare say. The less left in regard to the details of my device – and the fewer materials extant for the press and politicians of the world to comb over – the better. Enough is already destined to be known. The Oxygen Destroyer will no doubt be my epitaph.
In the wake of my discovery, I shunned the world more than ever before. For the first time since the war, I struggled to sleep and eat. My mind raced, obsessing over every possibility and potential course of action. It was a kind of limbo, a gray space between revelation and action. Any and every choice I made from that point forward would have a consequence, whether good or bad. I knew the world could never know of what I’d created. At least, not yet. The substance I’d birthed was still raw, unrefined. Dangerous. But there was still so much I didn’t know. Like a snake’s venom, it was full of lethal potential, but also possibilities for refinement. Perhaps it held benefits I could scarcely imagine. Properties that could be used for good. A power source, perhaps. Or the foundation for a new type of medicine.
But these thoughts only got me so far. Inevitably, my mind would drift back to the substance in its current form. I saw governments bidding for it, scientists mass producing it, airplanes releasing cases of it upon the masses below. And with every dark musing, I could feel my own specter coming closer, the shadows of my past looming larger, threatening to swallow me…
If, in the immediate months after its creation, you’d spoken to me of revealing my discovery to my fellow man, I’d have dismissed you as mad. I already felt mad enough myself, trapped in my solitary lab, the bearer of a secret too horrible to speak of.
But speak of it I did. Only once.
Perhaps it was the overwhelming pressure of my burden that compelled me to speak. Perhaps it was a kind of twisted pride in my research and the hope that some good might come from it. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. In the end, like so many small details and deceptively innocent choices in this strange story, the real reason means little. And so, I shared my secret, and I did so with the one person I believed I could trust.
I knew my fiancé did not love me back. It was a realization I’d come to years ago. Another dream I’d learned to let go of. But whatever her feelings toward me, she remained the human being to whom I felt the closest in this world. I never told her that.
Nevertheless, it was to her I revealed my discovery. It was her horrified eyes – not the eyes of the press, the government, or any preeminent scientist – that beheld a tank of doomed fish reduced to bones, their bodies disintegrated into atoms amidst the swirling, bubbling chaos of my device’s detonation.
She was horrified, of course. I was, too. And in the aftermath of the demonstration I’d prepared for her, I told her much of what has been recorded here. The relief I felt at finally sharing my secret was palpable. At last, someone else knew. Someone else understood.
It wouldn’t last.
The strength of my momentary relief was matched only by the profound betrayal I felt at learning – several days later – that she’d broken her word and told another what she’d seen. To say I felt a fool would be an understatement. I’d let my weakness and fear convince me that someone – anyone – could be trusted with my secret. I was hurt. Angry. Panicked. Conflicted over what to do next. But now…
Now, it’s become clear to me that some secrets are never meant to stay secret. The truth will always emerge from the shadows, its confinement more a temporary trifle than a perpetual state of being. In some cases, this revelation of the truth can be a devastation. The right secret revealed at the wrong time can end the world.
But not always. Not always…
And such is the fate of my secret. Such is the fate of my life, my passion, my second chance. She was right to reveal my secret. She was right to break her vow. Without her betrayal, I would never have acted. The full weight of my role in the resolution of Japan’s next great tragedy would never have settled on me.
There was a reason she’d spoken. A profound, horrifying reason. For while I hid away from my fellow man, convinced I’d brought about the end of the world, something else was endeavoring to end it in my stead.
Death – just as before – had come to my broken country. Death in the form of a great and terrible beast born of nature and mankind alike, unleashed by a weapon of equal measure to the device I’d accidently birthed into the world. It had come from the sea, a living mountain of flesh and atomic fire. It had unleashed hell on Tokyo. It had killed thousands. And nothing – not the weapons of the army nor the greatest minds in Japan – could slay it.
I’d watched it all unfold from the safety of my home. As my television broadcast images of a city reduced to ash and the unrelenting shadow of the nightmare beast looming over the wreckage, I’d felt a fear I’d not experienced in many years. It was the same dread, the same feeling of helplessness. The same nauseous, aching, crippling realization that something beyond my control would soon snuff me out, like a candle in a tempest.
For the first time in a decade, I saw – and felt – the war.
This was why Emiko-san had spoken of my invention. To her, it was an answer. A chance to awaken from the nightmare. It could end the suffering. It could banish the beast back to hell.
And as I said before, she was right. She and the man who traveled with her that day to ask me for my help. The man I knew she loved instead of me. They were both right. I could see the suffering of a nation welling in their eyes. I would soon hear it, too, echoing through the voices of children as they sang a prayer televised across the nation. As I listened, their pain became my pain. Their sorrow, my sorrow…
It had all come to a head for me. Every moment of my life seemed poised to converge in one massive moment of revelation and torment. My hopeful youth, my dream of peace, my wartime nightmare, my injuries, my pain, my fear, my invention, the monster… It had all led to this single, profound decision.
I’ve spent my entire life dreaming of peace. I’d watched that dream sour and darken with shadowed failure more than once. There were occasional moments when I thought I’d nearly found that peace, and others – many others – when I’d resolved that it would neither be mine nor the world’s for the having. I’d survived a war, secluded myself in my work, become an outsider, hidden my scars… and now, in a moment of reignited violence and ceaseless arms races, my reality teetered on the outcome of an impossible choice.
But I already knew what my decision would be.
And so, here I sit, on the morning of Japan’s final move against an enemy the likes of which it’s never faced. An enemy that, even now, rests in the ocean off the coast of my homeland, no doubt plotting its next move like a vengeful god of old.
If all goes according to plan, that next move will never be made.
Soon, I will confront the beast in his lair. There will be no safety, no reassurance of distance or a television screen to separate us. I will be at his mercy. His might be the final eyes to meet my gaze in this lifetime. Never again will he stare down upon a frightened nation. Perhaps, instead of wrath, I’ll see fear reflected back.
I’ve burned all traces of my research. It’s possible the notepad I write these very words on is the last surviving paper in my entire laboratory. Perhaps, once I’ve finished recording my thoughts, I’ll burn this, too. I remain undecided at the moment.
It’s a surreal feeling, the knowledge that this will be the last time I see my home. That I’m currently penning the last words I’ll ever write. They don’t know, of course. They can’t know. But in the event that I do leave this record for posterity, let it be known that I’m confident in my decision. I hope the story I’ve told here will serve as a suitable explanation, and – dare I hope – a more suitable epitaph than the hellish device that now sits at my side, hours from its first and only deployment.
However, I also want it known that by no means do I consider this the end of the matter. My actions today, if the gods are smiling on me, will win the battle, but not the war. The people and the politicians will cheer at the beast’s death. They will revel and yell and stand in awe of themselves, the murders of monsters. But there’s something they don’t understand: there is no going back. No mending what’s been shattered in the world. No malevolent force, once loosed, can be corralled again, be it missile, bomb, or beast. Monsters are inevitable. Godzilla is inevitable.
But, at least for now, the danger can be subdued. For now, there will be no monster. There will be no Oxygen Destroyer. There will be no new war.
Peace is not worth killing for.
But it is worth dying for.
At long last, I have found and lived my long-sought dream of peace. I hope and pray you find yours, too.
Live well,
芹沢大助
The Godzilla Novelization Project 