Godzilla (1954) is two directors' footage interleaved, not one film

Honda Ishirō and Tsuburaya Eiji did not work on the same set. They met early to agree shot lists, then shot independently — Honda on human-scale stages (civilian faces, hospital wards, the Serizawa thread), Tsuburaya in the SFX department with miniatures and suits. They synced briefly each day and handed off to the editor. What you watch is a literal alternation between two men's footage.

Their wartime experiences had run in opposite directions. Honda was conscripted infantry, a sergeant in China managing contact with civilians, captured at surrender, returned a pacifist. Tsuburaya spent the war on the other side of the camera: directing effects for Imperial propaganda, most famously restaging Pearl Harbor in miniature for The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya (1942), then quietly reinstated by American occupiers after an initial blacklist.

	Honda Ishirō	Tsuburaya Eiji
Wartime role	Conscripted infantry; sergeant in charge of civilian contact in China	SFX direction for Imperial propaganda
Signature wartime image	Civilians caught between armies	Miniature Pearl Harbor restaged for the screen
Reading of the bomb	Personal moral catastrophe to witness	Technical problem — how do you show annihilation?
Postwar standing	Returned a pacifist; lifelong friend of Kurosawa	Blacklisted by U.S. occupiers, then reinstated

The Serizawa thread is Honda's — it indicts the category of weapon. The Diet building shouldered through by a tail is Tsuburaya's — it invites you to admire the demolition. The same film holds both, barely.

Source claim: Godzilla (1954) is the literal interleaving of two separately shot films by two directors whose wartime experiences ran in opposite directions.