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Five lessons for humanity from Son of Godzilla (1967) about trusting children, the violence inherent in infinite scale, medicinal plant knowledge, play, and the fact that all of the children are our children.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION / / / 

Hello, 

Thank you for your patience—we know we are delivering this report later than usual. As you know, Dr. Tex “Steve” Collins stayed up too late! He was invited to appear as a guest on the It Came From a Monster Movie Rebirth podcast. Tex was impressed by the kindness, knowledge, and senses of humor of everyone involved. He keeps bragging that he’s met “real-life” paleontologists and that he has “new dinosaur friends.” It is beginning to get old. We do not think it will end anytime soon.

Now that Tex’s ego is more inflated than usual, he wants us to tell you that he noticed you haven’t sent funds for a new hat after his got damaged en route to Chicago. He says, “I hope you are satisfied with your Principle Investigator being embarrassed at Kaiju Brooklyn.”

KAIJU FIELD REPORT No. 10

• Date: May 15, 02026
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• Mission: Kaiju_Love_Care_Futures_02026
• Artifacts Examined: 
  • Son of Godzilla (1967)
  • Pages 120 - 129 Son of Godzilla, Chapter One of Part One: Beast of Burden: 1954 to 1975 of Ryfle, S., Godziszewski, E., Carpenter, J., Odaka, M., & Tomiyama, S. (2025). Godzilla: The First 70 Years: The Official Illustrated History of the Japanese Productions. Abrams Books. 
• Rations Consumed: several pieces of dark chocolate, electrolytes, espresso, and an apple
• Chief of Mission (AKA Dudley the Dog) Present? Yes

As predicted, the whole team had a lot of Big Feelings about Son of Godzilla. As you might imagine, we made a lot of bemused noises as we watched baby Godzilla (known as Minilla) learn how to use his body and navigate his environment with the loving support of Godzilla Sr. Ryfle and Godziszewski offer a concise synopsis:

Children had proved to be a dedicated audience, and the genre was now targeted more directly at them. With Son of Godzilla, director Jun Fukuda strikes an interesting balance between a straight-ahead science-fiction story about the misuse of technology to manipulate nature and a documentary-like view of monsters living in their natural environment. A baby Godzilla is born and raised, and Godzilla's humanlike attributes continue evolving as the monster becomes a stern but caring parent.  - Page 121, The First 70 Years

In this report, we offer five lessons for humanity about trusting children, the violence inherent in infinite scale, medicinal plant knowledge, play, and the fact that all of the children are our children.

LESSON FOR HUMANITY No. 1: For best results, trust and co-create with children

As our colleagues at Mission HQ know, we prefer a collaborative approach to our work. We believe that co-creation and collaboration can serve to challenge our culture’s mythology of the “rugged individual” who needs no help or support. None of us knows everything, but together, we know a lot.

We were thrilled to learn that, in an excellent example of collaboration and honoring community wisdom, Toho decided to co-create Godzilla Jr.’s name. Ryfle and Godziszewski describe the process: 

…the name of Godzilla's son was chosen by kids through a public submission campaign, and the winning selection of "Minilla" (often pronounced "Minya" in the West) was announced in a ceremony at Toho Studios, with children on hand to celebrate. With its wide eyes, pug nose, plump middle, and chubby thighs, Minilla resembles a cross between a young Godzilla and a human toddler, and behaves more like the latter. The little monster is alternately playful, friendly, and afraid, and its vexing habit of getting into harm's way turns Godzilla into a beleaguered parent always bailing its adopted son out of trouble. - Page 124, The First 70 Years

Not only is this an excellent example of co-creation, but also of trust. In our current present, we do not trust children! In fact, children are some of the most disenfranchised people in our society. If members of the public wish to build their understanding of this issue, we recommend starting with Trust Kids! Stories on Youth Autonomy and Confronting Adult Supremacy, edited by carla joy bergman.

We believe that building just and equitable futures require us to trust children and include them in decisions about their lives, futures, and dreams. 

We propose a question for the Arts Department: what might our shared futures look like if we trusted kids?

LESSON FOR HUMANITY No. 2: Infinite scaling is a bad idea 

As we have said before, we are of nature, not separate from it. In what is a classic humans-trying-to-control-nature move, UN-backed scientists conduct experiments to control the weather for increased agricultural production to keep up with projected population growth (which assumes infinite growth).

Ryfle and Godziszewski offer some context:: 

Sekizawa (who shared screenplay credit with Shiba) again keeps things fast-paced and light, even while using real-world concerns as a backdrop. The weather-control operation mirrors controversial cloud-seeding experiments aimed at boosting rainfall for crop production, or even the US military's secret efforts to create flooding rains and disrupt enemy supply lines during the Vietnam War. Kusumi is a figure of scientific altruism and hubris; he wants to reshape "worthless" deserts and jungles without regard to the ecosystems that would be radically altered. His work is a meteorological Manhattan Project, a world-changing test conducted at a remote location in secret for fear it could be weaponized in the wrong hands and "freeze the entire planet." Like the H-bomb that birthed Godzilla, it has unforeseen consequences. A glitch causes the experiment to malfunction, and instead of snow, the island is flooded with boiling rains.  - Pages 122-124, The First 70 Years

Indeed, Kusumi refers to deserts and jungles as “worthless” based on the idea that land is only useful if it is exploited for production. This idea is one that has been a key driver of colonization,  imperial violence, and poverty.  

In The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, David Graeber and David Wengrow argue that:

“The entire basis for dispossession, in turn, was premised on the idea that the current inhabitants [Indigenous peoples] of those lands weren’t really working. The argument goes back to John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1690), in which he argued that property rights are necessarily derived from labour. … Lazy natives, according to Locke’s disciples, didn’t do that. … James Tully, an authority on Indigenous rights, spells out the historical implications: land used for hunting and gathering was considered vacant, and ‘if the Aboriginal peoples attempt to subject the Europeans to their laws and customs or to defend the territories they have mistakenly believed to be their property for thousands of years, then it is they who violate natural law and may be punished or “destroyed” like savage beasts.’ - Page 149, The Dawn of Everything    

In The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, Eduardo Galeano outlines the evolution of agricultural exploitation in Latin America at the hands of Europeans: 

“The demand for sugar produced the plantation, an enterprise motivated by its proprietor’s desire for profit and placed at the service of the international market Europe was organizing … Subordinated to foreign needs and often financed from abroad, the colonial plantation evolved directly into the present-day latifundio, one of the bottlenecks that choke economic development and condemn the masses to poverty and a marginal existence in Latin America today.” - Page 60, The Open Veins of Latin America

Galeano goes on to describe the devastating ecological effects of sugar plantations (an example of man controlling nature for mass production):

“Sugar had destroyed the [Brazilian] Northeast. The humid coastal fringe, well watered by rains, had a soil of great fertility, rich in humus and mineral salts and covered by forests from Bahia to Ceará. This region of tropical forests was turned into a region of savannas. Naturally fitted to produce food, it became a place of hunger. Where everything had bloomed exuberantly, the destructive and all-dominating latifundio left sterile rock, washed-out soil, eroded lands. At first there had been orange and mango plantations, but these were left to their fate, or reduced to small orchards surrounding the sugarmill-owner's house, reserved exclusively for the family of the white planter. Fire was used to clear land for canefields, devastating the fauna along with the flora: deer, wild boar, tapir, rabbit, pacas, and armadillo disappeared. All was sacrificed on the altar of sugarcane monoculture.” - Page 62, The Open Veins of Latin America

We at the Field Office do not have the answers here, but we do believe that growth for growth’s sake is an idea rooted in violence, domination, and greed. A definition of value that is predicated on something’s capacity for production is one that is leading us directly into a dystopian future. Life is inherently valuable, not because of its capacity for production, but because life is beautiful and absurd. We, in partnership with our more than human neighbors, can redefine “value” as something rooted in care and love for people and the planet. 

While we do not have the answers, we do wish to be explicit: The Godzilla Mission Team supports the Land Back movement, which aims to place Indigenous lands back into Indigenous hands.

LESSON FOR HUMANITY No. 3: Know your medicinal plants

While the scientists are conducting these experiments in hubris, they cause the weather to change drastically. Some of the men contract a virus—something we are already seeing more of in connection to climate change. Saeko, a woman who has been living on the island by herself for many years, happens to know exactly where on the island to find the natural cure. 

We believe that leaning into ancestral wisdom and being in relationship with our local ecosystems will be crucial in the coming centuries. Knowing which plants are helpful, nutritious, or harmful is knowledge for survival. 

LESSON FOR HUMANITY No. 4: Play is an essential part of life

Minilla explores his new world with a curiosity that brought tears to our eyes. While Godzilla is sleeping, Minilla plays with his tail as if it is a jumprope. At one point, Godzilla opens his eyes and sees what’s going on—he closes his eyes again but moves his tail so that Minilla can continue playing. 

To use the vernacular: “oh my GOD 😭”

LESSON FOR HUMANITY No. 5: All of the children are our children

In 1980, James Baldwin’s piece, Notes on the House of Bondage was published in an Election Special Edition of The Nation. In it, Baldwin reflects on the upcoming Presidential election between Carter and Reagan (“Whoever wins the Presidency, most of America will lose.”)

The following excerpt from Baldwin's piece has echoed throughout the Field Office since our viewing of Son of Godzilla:

“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. Or, I am saying, in other words, that we, the elders, are the only models children have. What we see in the children is what they have seen in us—or, more accurately perhaps, what they see in us.”

In the film, we see Saeko—the woman we mentioned earlier who had a robust knowledge of medicinal plants on the island—feed Minilla tropical fruit and care for him as much as she can (her ability is limited seeing as Minilla is a Kaiju-sized baby).

What might our shared futures look and feel like if we moved through the world as Saeko did, as though every child was ours? What might a world rooted in a love ethic feel like? We suppose that—again—these are questions for the Arts Department.

We at the Field Office are feeling somber yet hopeful. The children really are the future. We must trust them and we must love them fully and without reserve.

Also please send us some money. We’re almost out of blueberries and the Chief of Mission is irate.

Yours in Science,

The Kaiju Mission Field Office Team

SABOTAGE TRACKER:

The man who lives at the Field Office but is in no way affiliated with the mission kept calling Minilla ugly. While we do not believe in policing as accountability, we do think he should be put in a cage or something. Please advise.

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