Are you being deliberately obtuse? The characterization had to do with the quality of the resistance, not "suicide prevention".....
wtj.com
At 9:45 A.M. on March 21, Admiral Ugaki gave the order to launch the first joint Thunder Gods assault, even though they would be unsupported by any other kamikaze sorties. Lieutenant-Commander Nonaka bluntly ignored his superior's orders to stand aside, and after selecting his best pilots he joined the Fleet commanders in the traditional farewell ceremony with the Thunder Gods and bomber crews. The 18 Betty bombers of this first flight only had 60 fighters to escort them, half of whom aborted due to engine troubles. Once the entire flight disappeared over the horizon, nothing more was heard until later that evening, when two damaged Zeros returned and told the story. The main flight had been intercepted by more than 50 American fighters and broken up while still 60 miles from the nearest carrier group. The entire formation was overwhelmed and within ten minutes all the Betty Bombers had either been shot down or forced to jettison their Ohkas in an attempt to escape. Nonaka was last seen flying wingtip to wingtip with three other bombers in a steep dive away from the fight. Nothing more was ever heard from any of the bomber crews or Nonaka......
....When Emperor Hirohito's decision to end the war was announced, the end did not come quietly. Virtually the entire Fifth Air Fleet command rebelled. On August 14, Admiral Onishi, one of the pioneers of the Kamikaze program, told a close friend; "It was not I who lost the war, but the Emperor." That evening he committed ritual suicide. Vice-Admiral Ugaki rebelled against the Imperial edict by leading a last flight of 11 Judy dive bombers in a fruitless mission against American shipping near Okinawa. Admiral Ozawa at Naval General Headquarters was furious with Ugaki, not only for disobeying the Imperial Mandate but for taking other men with him in the process of killing himself. Ugaki was denied the posthumous promotion which other suicide mission members usually received. His replacement, Vice-Admiral Ryunosuke Kusaka found himself in charge of a rebellious group of senior officers who were demanding that the Imperial mandate be ignored. He finally convinced them that Fifth Air Fleet's Chief-of-Staff be allowed to fly to Tokyo to hear the orders in person. In the meantime, individual men and officers discussed the technical meaning of surrender, what would happen to them, and whether the Americans would kill them. Some groups of men planned spontaneous mutinies, but for each group of mutineers, two other groups would refuse to take part, insisting that they wait for formal orders. As each miniature rebellion fell apart, more of the men came to rely on their officer's final decisions....
....Vice-Admiral Kusaka was spared by his officers that evening, and in the coming days and weeks, the Fifth Naval Air Fleet was successfully demobilized. Kusaka's men were given money, and then flown to air bases nearest their home towns. Ironically, the methods by which the war ended were second guessed by both sides. Most Japanese officers considered that they had been betrayed, and that the real battle would have taken place on Japanese soil. More recently, the United States has questioned its own use of nuclear weapons, thinking with 50 year hindsight that maybe the war could have been ended otherwise. Reading the accounts of these Imperial Navy Officers, it is clear that even with the leverage offered by the hopelessness of the Atomic bombs and the Soviet declaration of war, the Japanese Emperor only barely succeeded in demobilizing his own officers. Had the situation been less hopeless, the orders to cease hostilities might have been summarily ignored by large segments of the officers corps, triggering an unknown but probably tragic series of events. |
