Pons???? what does it mean? Japanese? what is it derived from?
Obergrupenfurher ??? what does that mean??
Everytime I hear Obergunfurher smith mentioned, that school song comes into my mind :
John Jacob Obergrupenfurher Smith,
His name is my name tooooo.
Whenever we go out, people always shout...
John Jacob Obergrupenfurther Smith.
The pons are the Japanese. I think the derivation is from "Nippon." I can't remember if that was from the novel as it has been ages since I read it.
shareFrom Wikipedia:
"Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA, and adopted by the Schutzstaffel one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank, inferior only to Reichsführer-SS."
Nippon (also Nihon) is Japan's proper name when used by their government, and "Pon" is just a shortening of that. Historically, a number of the Allied nations' soldiers, as well as bitter civilians and politicians, referred to the Japanese with the slur "Jap." In an alternate history, they may be educated against such terms and told to pronounce the country's name as Nippon, only to subvert that as well with the term "Pon."
shareHistorically, a number of the Allied nations' soldiers, as well as bitter civilians and politicians, referred to the Japanese with the slur "Jap." In an alternate history, they may be educated against such terms and told to pronounce the country's name as Nippon, only to subvert that as well with the term "Pon."My take wasn't that they were avoiding a slur, simply that in this alternate universe, the word "Pon" had become the slur.
I think that in the real world they didn't want their white actors walking around calling people "Japs" and so they invented a fake slur for them to use.
sharePons is a slur for the Japanese. It comes from Nippon, which is what the Japanese call their country. It's probably meant to be a slur which the resistance and others can use without having to resort to the real world slurs of "Jap" or "Nip".
Obergruppenfuhrer literally means "senior group leader" or "upper group leader". It's an officers rank in the SS, roughly equivalent to a general. It's the highest rank below the leader of the SS. It makes sense that Smith, who is apparently the senior SS man in America, would be an Obergruppenfuhrer.