5 accidentally found itself near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, where the U.S. military was testing hydrogen bombs as part of a project known as Castle Bravo.

Wanting to capitalize on the wave of radiation-related anxiety sweeping Japan, in early 1954, the producer Tomoyuki Tanaka from Toho Studios approached the popular science-fiction writer Shigeru Kayama to come up with a screenplay about a radioactive kaiju monster.

When Kayama wrote the scenario that would become the basis for the screenplay for Godzilla, he conceived of the film as a means to express his concern about nuclear weapons.

[4] Literary historian Jeffrey Angles has argued that Kayama used these novellas, which he penned himself, as a means to reassert his nuclear message.

[5] In them one finds that Kayama introduces his story with a brief, anti-nuclear statement that suggests one should read the novellas as form of protest literature.