Inaba Masao

was a Japanese officer during World War II of the Military Affairs Bureau.

In 1945, after the Emperor and his ministers were seeking to surrender, he urged Korechika Anami, the War Minister, that the soldiers be told to keep fighting, especially with the Soviet Union massing its forces. The Director of the Information Bureau, Hiroshi Shimomura, concluded that without its broadcast, Anami might be assassinated by younger officers, and so broadcast it.

This caused consternation in the government, which feared that his statement would provoke a third atomic bomb, and arranged for the message to be sent as a news broadcast, in English and Morse code, to escape military censors and so arrive in time.