Yeah, I'd been over the pages with the naming conventions before, but usually it's the Allied's naming conventions for the Japanese fighters (boys' names), ships (girls, I think), and gliders (animals). Then I scrolled down further, saw the "wild goose" moniker, and researched it further. Lo and behold...
The thing is, the plane's name--Zero--wasn't really zero. It's something else, grrr, that I can't recall now. However, the Japanese military designated 1940 as 'the zero year', which I think was related to the notion of the great new era of co-prosperity beginning under Japanese domination. So the plane got the nickname of Zero (and the allies, for some odd reason, called it Zeke).
What really stands as connection between the ZERO in GW and the Zero in Japan's history is that the Zero was the means by which Japan was able to dominate from 1940 through about 1946. By the time the Pacific theater was in full flush, though, the Zero was already becoming obsolete, but they kept with it, instead of updating. In the end, the majority of kamikaze pilots flew Zeroes, from what I recall.
However, the fact that Zero is what allowed Japan to dominate could be the tweak by the GW writers: ZERO, after all, is an atrociously powerful weapon, one that drives the pilot insane--but that insanity could be, in part, from having so much power at his fingertips. If my instincts are right on the GW writers' attitudes, they're saying--between the lines--that having such an unstoppable weapon on the Japanese side really opened the door to behaviors that probably should not have been perpetrated upon colonists (whether that be in space, or meaning China, Indochina, and so on).
Re: goosefeathers
Date: 21 Apr 2005 11:34 pm (UTC)The thing is, the plane's name--Zero--wasn't really zero. It's something else, grrr, that I can't recall now. However, the Japanese military designated 1940 as 'the zero year', which I think was related to the notion of the great new era of co-prosperity beginning under Japanese domination. So the plane got the nickname of Zero (and the allies, for some odd reason, called it Zeke).
What really stands as connection between the ZERO in GW and the Zero in Japan's history is that the Zero was the means by which Japan was able to dominate from 1940 through about 1946. By the time the Pacific theater was in full flush, though, the Zero was already becoming obsolete, but they kept with it, instead of updating. In the end, the majority of kamikaze pilots flew Zeroes, from what I recall.
However, the fact that Zero is what allowed Japan to dominate could be the tweak by the GW writers: ZERO, after all, is an atrociously powerful weapon, one that drives the pilot insane--but that insanity could be, in part, from having so much power at his fingertips. If my instincts are right on the GW writers' attitudes, they're saying--between the lines--that having such an unstoppable weapon on the Japanese side really opened the door to behaviors that probably should not have been perpetrated upon colonists (whether that be in space, or meaning China, Indochina, and so on).