Tomorrow marks the return of one of the greatest icons in movie history: Godzilla, in the new, aptly titled Godzilla: King of the Monsters. But before that now-iconic horn section—you know the one—trumpeted a man in a rubber suit’s ungainly emergence from an indoor swimming pool filmed to look like Tokyo Bay, its composer nearly died his own horrific B-movie death.

Nine years before the release of the 1954 original Godzilla, Akira Ifukube lay in a hospital bed listening to the radio narrate his nation’s surrender to Allied forces, hoping the radiation poisoning wouldn’t kill him. Recent work on reverse-engineering a de Havilland Mosquito for the Japanese military had unknowingly exposed him to dangerous amounts of X-rays, his capillaries literally disintegrating while his team threw their research files onto a bonfire in anticipation of Occupation soldiers. Ifukube had already collapsed to the ground from vomiting blood by the time the Americans arrived. He knew the danger he was in—his brother, Isao, had succumbed to a similar fate only a few years earlier, while researching fluorescent paint usages for the Imperial war effort. Earlier that month, Ifukube had witnessed atomic fire incinerate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Now, he listened from his bed as reporters described General MacArthur descending aircraft steps to receive Japan’s terms of surrender. A military band struck up a march, their first notes of Kishi Mai instantly recognizable to the sick man. If the end of the world wasn’t already surreal enough, it was now being soundtracked by one of his own songs.

Born on May 31, 1914, Akira Ifukube is widely considered one of the most well-regarded and prolific composers of modern Japanese classical music and film scores. His revolutionary blend of traditional ainu (Japanese folk) melodies and instrumentation with Western classical theory paved the way for cultural merging and experimentation in the years to come, sort of like a Japanese Philip Glass—although, given their respective eras, it’s more accurate to call Glass an American Ifukube.