Zero Over Berlin
Hardcover: 352 pages / Publisher: Vertical (July 1, 2004) / Language: English
This title is the first episode of a trilogy describing the lives of the Japanese people during WWII. As an author, I elaborated a plan to picture Japanese people during wartime three-dimensionally, in relation with other Asian and Western countries in three episodes, choosing three important phases as their backgrounds: the Conclusion of the tripartite pact with Germany and Italy in 1940, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941, and the atomic bombing and surrender of Japan in 1945.
Each title is a completely detached entertainment story. The leitmotif of “Zero over Berlin” is the adventurous spirit and professionalism of a pilot of the old school. However, once a reader goes through the three episodes, another imposing motif “War and the Human” will be exposed.
I am often asked whether the adventurous flight described in "Zero over Berlin" really took place. The fact is that it is completely fiction.
There are two flights in history that prompted this novel. First, the long-distance flight between Tokyo and London by a Japanese two-seater airplane which lasted ninety-seven hours in 1937. Second, an A-26, twin-engined airplane flight which took off from Singapore for Berlin in 1944, during the war, which went missing. These two aviation events gave me the basic idea to write this book. READ MORE ▶