No. They didn’t. The gas tank in the Zero was located directly behind the pilots seat. They were made almost entirely from aluminum , they didn’t have self sealing gas tanks and their pilots didn’t use parachutes, or very rarely used them.
The late model Jap aircraft all had either CO2 systems or self sealing fuel tanks. The follow on to the Zero, the a7m, was good plane. I don’t know why that plane took so long to go into productions. The Japs did some real stupid stuff in WWII.