Civil war did not seem beyond possibility. According to Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, the last prewar ambassador to the United States, the regime’s habit of celebrating make-believe victories was self-defeating, because Japanese public opinion was never prepared for a negotiated settlement. “If we had stopped the war any earlier the people would not have understood. They had never been told the truth about the situation and there would have been civil war in Japan among the people . . . it seems to me that it was the destiny of our country to continue this very unwise war to the very end.”
